SPEAKERS CONTENTS INSERTS
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88–956
2004
[H.A.S.C. No. 108–9]
UNITED STATES GLOBAL DEFENSE POSTURE
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
HEARING HELD
NOVEMBER 19, 2003
HOUSE COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
One Hundred Eighth Congress
DUNCAN HUNTER, California, Chairman
CURT WELDON, Pennsylvania
JOEL HEFLEY, Colorado
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JIM SAXTON, New Jersey
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York
TERRY EVERETT, Alabama
ROSCOE G. BARTLETT, Maryland
HOWARD P. ''BUCK'' McKEON, California
MAC THORNBERRY, Texas
JOHN N. HOSTETTLER, Indiana
WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina
JIM RYUN, Kansas
JIM GIBBONS, Nevada
ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina
HEATHER WILSON, New Mexico
KEN CALVERT, California
ROB SIMMONS, Connecticut
JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia
ED SCHROCK, Virginia
W. TODD AKIN, Missouri
J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia
JEFF MILLER, Florida
JOE WILSON, South Carolina
FRANK A. LoBIONDO, New Jersey
TOM COLE, Oklahoma
JEB BRADLEY, New Hampshire
ROB BISHOP, Utah
MICHAEL TURNER, Ohio
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JOHN KLINE, Minnesota
CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan
PHIL GINGREY, Georgia
MIKE ROGERS, Alabama
TRENT FRANKS, Arizona
IKE SKELTON, Missouri
JOHN SPRATT, South Carolina
SOLOMON P. ORTIZ, Texas
LANE EVANS, Illinois
GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi
NEIL ABERCROMBIE, Hawaii
MARTY MEEHAN, Massachusetts
SILVESTRE REYES, Texas
VIC SNYDER, Arkansas
JIM TURNER, Texas
ADAM SMITH, Washington
LORETTA SANCHEZ, California
MIKE McINTYRE, North Carolina
CIRO D. RODRIGUEZ, Texas
ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California
ROBERT A. BRADY, Pennsylvania
BARON P. HILL, Indiana
JOHN B. LARSON, Connecticut
SUSAN A. DAVIS, California
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JAMES R. LANGEVIN, Rhode Island
STEVE ISRAEL, New York
RICK LARSEN, Washington
JIM COOPER, Tennessee
JIM MARSHALL, Georgia
KENDRICK B. MEEK, Florida
MADELEINE Z. BORDALLO, Guam
RODNEY ALEXANDER, Louisiana
TIM RYAN, Ohio
Robert S. Rangel, Staff Director
James M. Lariviere, Professional Staff Member
Justin Bernier, Research Assistant
C O N T E N T S
CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS
2003
HEARING:
Wednesday, November 19, 2003, United States National Security Strategy
APPENDIX:
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Wednesday, November 19, 2003
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2003
UNITED STATES NATIONAL SECURITY STRATEGY
STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
Hunter, Hon. Duncan, a Representative from California, Chairman, Committee on Armed Services
Skelton, Hon. Ike, a Representative from Missouri, Ranking Member, Committee on Armed Services
WITNESSES
Berger, Sandy R., Chairman, Stonebridge International
Kirkpatrick, Dr. Jeane J., Senior Fellow and Director of Foreign and Defense Policy Studies, American Enterprise Institute
APPENDIX
PREPARED STATEMENTS:
[The Prepared Statements can be viewed in the hard copy.]
Berger, Sandy R.
Hunter, Hon. Duncan
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Kirkpatrick, Dr. Jeane J.
Larson, Hon. John B.
Skelton, Hon. Ike
DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD:
[The Documents can be viewed in the hard copy.]
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD:
[The Questions and Answers can be viewed in the hard copy.]
Mr. Thornberry
UNITED STATES NATIONAL SECURITY STRATEGY
House of Representatives,
Committee on Armed Services,
Washington, DC, Wednesday, November 19, 2003.
The committee met, pursuant to call, at 2:45 p.m., in room 2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Duncan Hunter (chairman of the committee) presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. DUNCAN HUNTER, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM CALIFORNIA, CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
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The CHAIRMAN. The committee will come to order. Today the committee will review the U.S. National Security Strategy, the blueprint for executing the first and most fundamental responsibility of the Federal Government: The defense of our Nation. The Goldwater Nichols Act of 1986 requires a president of the United States to produce a national security strategy and release it as a public document. The current national security strategy delivered 1 year to the month after the terrorist attacks of September 11 reflects that day's impact on the United States and the international security environment.
The new strategy makes a clear break from the realities of the Cold War superpower standoff. The United States, the strategy observes, is unlikely to face a true peer competitor in the near future. Instead, the 2002 strategy recognizes that our greatest challenges are likely to come from failed states and shadowy terrorist networks that seek to use weapons of mass destruction (WMD) to affect large scale casualties. The nexus between these actors and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction represents a grave danger to the United States itself.
To fight this imminent threat, the National Security Strategy aims to build a balance of power that favors freedom and, ultimately, a larger community of democracies with common values. This goal requires the United States to counter terror and tyranny away from America's shores. It also calls on the reliance of strong coalitions of the willing with other countries dedicated to the proliferation of liberty, not destruction.
Today we will hear from two well-known strategists who have distinguished themselves in the world of foreign and defense policy. We have with us the Honorable Jean Kirkpatrick—she is somewhat delayed, but will be here shortly—Senior Fellow and Director of Foreign and Defense Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, as well as a former U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations. And also with us, we are very honored to have the Honorable Sandy Berger, Chairman of Stonebridge International and a former National Security Advisor to the President of the United States. So I want to thank you, Sandy, and I know Jean will be here shortly. We appreciate your taking time from a very busy schedule to make yourself available for the committee.
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And before we begin, I would like to recognize my partner, the committee's ranking Democrat, the gentleman from Missouri, Mr. Skelton, for any remarks he might want to make.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Hunter can be viewed in the hard copy]
STATEMENT OF HON. IKE SKELTON, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM MISSOURI, RANKING MEMBER, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
Mr. SKELTON. Mr. Chairman, thank you and thank you for having this hearing. Mr. Berger, I know how difficult it was for you to be here. We are especially grateful for you to be with us and share your thoughts with us on this very important subject, and we look forward to Ambassador Kirkpatrick; I think she will be here momentarily. We look forward to her joining us.
Now, Mr. Chairman, the hearing is not just about Iraq. It occurs against the background of that conflict and the violence there has continued particularly in the recent weeks. But there remains a substantial debate about whether the decision to go to war in Iraq was made on the basis of poor or selective intelligence. But regardless of the answer to that question, we are there. We are there now. We can't unring that bell. And failure is not an option.
So we are left with two questions: First, how can we achieve victory in Iraq; and second, and more difficult, the second question is, can we re-establish a strong international strategic stand? Failure to answer each of these questions puts our nation frankly in jeopardy, and I hope the witnesses today will give us their best judgment and thoughts on these issues. Thank you.
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[The prepared statement of Mr. Skelton can be viewed in the hard copy.]
The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman. And once again, Mr. Berger, thank you for taking time from a very busy schedule to be with us today. And the floor is yours, sir.
STATEMENT OF SANDY R. BERGER, CHAIRMAN, STONEBRIDGE INTERNATIONAL
Mr. BERGER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Congressman Skelton, members of the committee. I thank you for inviting me to talk about the Administration's National Security Strategy. One year and one war since its release. After the strategy was published in September 2002, commentators described it as everything from quote, ''a truly eloquent, comprehensive, intellectually cohesive and groundbreaking definition of a strategy for the 21st century,'' to, and I quote, ''a declaration of war against the world.''
Let me offer a perspective that falls between those two extremes. In some respects, President Bush's strategy is similar to those of previous administrations. In emphasizing goals such as encouraging free and open societies, combatting the net of terrorists and rogue nations, working closely with allies and friends, it is at least rhetorically consistent with the values of past administrations.
But in other respects, the document reflects a different America, in a dramatically different national security environment in the wake of 9/11. And so, it should. The war on terrorism and the danger of terrorists gaining weapons of mass destruction have become our central strategic objective. In al Qaeda and other anti-American jihadists, we face a mortal enemy. Whatever grievances they exploit do not diminish the imperative of destroying them before they destroy us. And as the President has also said, we must keep the world's deadliest weapons out of its most dangerous hands.
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Yet, deterrence will not work against suicide bombers who believe they answer only to their God. The administration is right to underscore the need for active robust U.S. leadership in the world. But I believe their vision of American leadership is dangerously limited. Yes, the confident use of military power sometimes is necessary to meet the threats we face. It is not, however, self justifying, or sufficient to assure our security. And today I think we are seeing around the world a backlash from a policy that assumes that the example of our power is mightier than the power of our example. We see it in foreign leaders in, frankly, countries being elected on the anti-American platforms, in our difficulty rallying assistance for the Iraq war and its aftermath, in the polls showing plummeting admiration for America in much of the world.
Critics have raised a number of concerns about the administration's national security strategy. I want to focus on one, its elevation of preemptive military action to a defining doctrine of American strategic policy. Certainly, every U.S. president reserves the right to act preemptively in unique circumstances of danger. President Clinton acted preemptively to strike al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan where we believed Osama bin Laden was gathering to plan further an action on U.S. interests. But I believe the Bush administration's decision to elevate preemption from an option every president reserves to a central doctrine of American policy is misguided.
I believe this doctrine of preemption exacerbates rather than alleviates instability and proliferation and in so doing, may make America less secure, not more. First, the National Security Strategy says other nations should not use preemption as a pretext for aggression. But why should we expect others to cede this right to us alone? The more America embraces and endorses a policy of striking first, the greater justification we give other nations and dangerous regions like the Middle East or South Asia to use it as a pretext for attacking their own enemies. Second, let's consider the operational realities. The strategy declares that, quote, ''we must adapt the concept of imminent threat to the capabilities and objectives of today's adversaries.'' But that requires a sophisticated understanding of what those capabilities and objectives actually are.
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Today, the failure to locate weapons of mass destruction in Iraq points out how illusive indisputable intelligence can be. It brings to mind Will Rogers remark that it's not what we don't know that hurts, it's what we know that ain't so. America cannot afford to be perceived as pursuing a policy of shoot now, ask questions later. Our credibility and authority will be completely destroyed.
Finally, I believe a preemption doctrine can be counterproductive, even in terms of counterproliferation. In the name of deterring nations from going nuclear, in particular, North Korea and Iran, we actually may be driving them to accelerate their nuclear program, to draw the conclusion that Saddam's mistake was not getting his nuclear weapons fast enough. Paradoxically, the more we threaten preemptive military action to stem WMD proliferation, the more precarious our security may become.
So what should we do differently? Let me limit myself to three ideas: First, we must tackle the threat of weapons of mass destruction more creatively and comprehensively. North Korea and Iran are serious problems, but they are not the only ones. As former Senator Sam Nunn has said, right now tons of poorly secured plutonium and highly enriched uranium, the raw materials of nuclear terrorism are spread around the world. We thought we knew what Saddam Hussein had.
Well, we do know what the former Soviet Union has, more than 120 metric tons of fissile materials still waiting for security upgrades, enough to build thousands of nuclear weapons. Mr. Chairman, it only takes one. We need a systematic counterproliferation policy that deploys all the tools we have. Better intelligence, smarter export controls, covert action, focused missile defense, a dramatic expansion of cooperative threat reduction programs, deterrence and the option of military action.
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Second, we need to build our alliances and view them as an asset, not a liability. Coalitions of the willing appear to have become a substitute for enduring alliances. Such coalitions sometimes are necessary. But they are no substitute for established alliances where regular contact builds a common perception of the dangers we all face. Of course, partnerships must be reciprocal. Our allies must do their part rather than define their role in terms of constraining our actions.
But we should all be clear. We only strengthen our enemies when we divide ourselves. Finally, we must be unrelenting in meeting the central challenge of our time, the fight against terrorist enemies. The first dimension of that fight is offense. To organize ourselves for the long-term from further reform of our intelligence apparatus to focusing on the military strategy, forces and technology that can better enable us to defeat this enemy. The second dimension is defense, dramatically accelerating efforts at home, on Homeland Security from cyber to cargo safety.
But there is a critical third dimension, Mr. Chairman, to the war again terrorism that I believe we have neglected, and it goes beyond offense and defense. The President has said that the front line of the war on terrorism now is Baghdad. I respectfully disagree. The front line of the war on terrorism today is where we are. Particularly in places where people don't want us to be. And if that is true, it is essential that we define who we are in ways that isolate the extremists, not ourselves.
We cannot destroy every potential terrorist. But we can, over time, reduce the anti American hostility they exploit. Particularly at a time when we are using the hard edge of our power to protect ourselves, we must also lead in a broader agenda of shared well-being, energetically working for peace, staying at the table rather than turning our backs on international agreements that matter deeply to the rest of the world, helping to narrow the gap between rich and poor nations, working to solve environmental challenges.
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It is these kinds of efforts that earn us the moral authority on which our influence depends. Mr. Chairman, the United States is at the pinnacle of our power. We saw that in the awesome military campaign in Iraq. We should never apologize for our power. It has far more often been harnessed to good than to ill. But power without moral authority does not translate into influence. Moral authority derives from things different from our power, what we stand for, how we treat others, whether we lead across a broad shared agenda. We must offer the world a positive vision, one to which nations who share our values can join their strength. It is not enough for a great power to be defined by what we are against. To lead in the global age, we must show the world what America is for. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would be glad to take your questions at the end of Ambassador Kirkpatrick's remarks.
The CHAIRMAN. Well, Mr. Berger, thank you very much for your statement.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Berger can be viewed in the hard copy.]
The CHAIRMAN. And Ambassador Kirkpatrick, thank you for being with us. We appreciate your presence, as well. And the floor is yours.
STATEMENT OF HON. JEANE J. KIRKPATRICK, SENIOR FELLOW AND DIRECTOR OF FOREIGN AND DEFENSE POLICY STUDIES, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE
Dr. KIRKPATRICK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
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The CHAIRMAN. And great to see you again.
Dr. KIRKPATRICK. Thank you. It is good to be here. Appreciate you inviting me.
The CHAIRMAN. And you might want to bring that mic up a little closer there.
Dr. KIRKPATRICK. Thank you. What I want to speak about, obviously, is the growth of terrorism and the vulnerabilities to which we are today subject and what we might do about them. We all know, as—because we all experienced on September 11 that the threat to Americans is here and now. It is not at some future time, not some remote possibility. It is here and now. And it has expanded greatly and it continues to expand greatly. Terrorism, I think, began its rapid growth in the 1970's. And it was growing rapidly at the time that President Reagan was inaugurated and that I joined the U.S. Government for the Reagan term, the Reagan years.
The early successes of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) were critical, actually, in the establishment of the international terrorism, particularly in hijacking of international airliners and the use of hijacking as a kind of weapon of terror. It was new then. And we all know, and it is old today unfortunately. Everyone remembers the hijacking of TWA 847 and of Pan Am 103 and of the Achille Lauro and all of the people who were killed in those hijackings. Those acts of terrorism were, for the most part, carried out by the PLO and groups of the PLO. And they were relatively primitive by contemporary standards of terrorist activities.
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In fact, we all know the increased capacities have been developed on the part of terrorists. Not only their skill with—in hijacking planes and in utilizing planes themselves as weapons, but of course, in the use of electrical and biological and nuclear powers. And we are much more vulnerable than we ever have been.
I like Sandy Berger's line that terrorism, the front line of terrorism is where we are. That is, I think, absolutely correct. And we are, I think, very much aware of the—not only our increasing vulnerability but the terrorists increasing capacity to do harm. That capacity has been illustrated so many times that we are all familiar with it. It was illustrated in the bombings of our embassies in Africa. It was illustrated in the attacks on international aid workers much more recently in Afghanistan and in Iraq, illustrated in murder of Americans and our allies and our friends. It is illustrated across many borders and illustrated in targeting many people from many different countries. Most of the people that terrorists target have been unknown to us, and the manners in which they have arrived in the United States is often unknown to us.
Our intelligence needs have increased dramatically. Geometrically alongside our growing vulnerabilities, and I think that is not likely—we are not likely to solve the problem of our increasing vulnerabilities very soon, because they are a consequence of our open borders and our habits of free movement and our relatively casual border security. Although we are trying—we have worked on changing all of that, I think we are not going to change it too soon frankly, or solve those problems too soon, because our habits of easy entrance and egress are very deeply set in our culture and in our own patterns of behavior.
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Our intelligence needs have increased geometrically alongside our growing vulnerabilities. Our imagination about the uses of terrorism in attacks on Americans, I think, has increased. I think that we have had a real problem, frankly, in believing in our vulnerability to terrorist attacks. I thought quite a lot about the fact that in the Reagan years, where we were very concerned about questions of security, we did not really formulate in a way that I remember today an effective adequate conception of terrorism as a major strategic threat to the United States. We were too—you know, we were focused principally on the Soviet Union in those years. And we understood that the Soviet Union was itself engaging in training and equipping some terrorist operations, particularly those of the PLO and some of the other Arab groups. But we didn't conceive of the terrorism as a major strategic problem.
And I think that was just a matter of habit, really, and of habitual ways of thinking about danger and about vulnerability. I think that it was difficult for us to accept and believe in the reality, if you will, of the Oklahoma City's bomber and bombing. That seemed almost unbelievable to me anyway. That there should be—an American terrorist would commit such an act was not easy for me to really accept. Maybe that is because I am an Oklahoman. I don't know. But I found it difficult to believe. I think that the—many of the threats against Americans today are also somewhat difficult to believe. Although we are—and by now, have had plenty of experience with the mix of fanaticism and intolerance and violence that accompany terrorist attacks and terrorist behavior and thrive in the states that sponsor terrorism and give refuge to terrorists.
I don't think we have been quick to understand the terrorist threat and I do believe that it is, above all, because our habits have inclined us to reject this pattern of behavior as a reality in our midst, defining our environment.
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In the years since the Iranian revolution, we have understood that there are states such as Iran which have sponsored and equipped and assisted in a variety of ways groups of terrorists. I have personally studied Hamas and Hezbollah on various occasions and I know they are very dangerous groups and they do—yes, they are specialists in murder. And I think that as specialists in murder, we need to be very alert and we need to be mobilized. We have understood that they are linked to terrorist states. We have understood that Osama bin Laden, for example, takes us as his principal target and tells us again and again and again that he will not only kill Americans whenever and wherever he has the chance, but that he will recommend to all of his followers to kill Americans and her allies, civilian and military, I am quoting now, ''in any country in which it is possible to do it in order to liberate the Muslim peoples and their mosques and Mecca from their grip''—from the grip of the Americans.
Today we believe that Osama bin Laden was the mastermind of the ambush that killed 19 Americans in Somalia. And we didn't know that at the time. I doubt if anyone seriously investigated that possibility at the time. Maybe someone did. But certainly, it was not generally discussed at the time. We know now that he was involved or probably involved—we think he was involved in the Khobar Towers attack that killed 17 U.S. servicemen. And we know, certainly, that he was involved probably as the mastermind in both the first and the last Twin Towers bombings and, of course, in the attack on the Pentagon. We know that our intelligence capacities, in assessing all these attacks on Americans, has been inadequate. We have not been able to predict and we have not been able, in many cases, to respond adequately to capture the perpetrators.
We haven't been able to capture Osama bin Laden any more than we have been able to capture Saddam Hussein. Our intelligence is not adequate to the threats with which we deal, with which we are confronted. I believe that the first priority in protecting ourselves must be, as I think the Congress has said several times by now, the mobilization of a more effective intelligence operation than we now have. And it must include human intelligence as well as all other kinds of appropriate intelligence. We must, I think, engage in a realistic assessment of the dangers that we confront. I still believe we need a good missile defense, because we will, I feel sure, some day before too long, confront missiles headed at us here in the United States as well as at our servicemen in other places where they may be.
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I believe that the terrorists have made it necessary for us to enact such bills as the PATRIOT Act and engage in such practices as surveillance, which we have always been reluctant to do and quite reasonably so, I think. But I believe that today we know we must defend ourselves against some very murderous, very highly motivated enemies who are determined to destroy us.
I think on the question of preemption, I have thought quite a bit about preemption and I believe that it is difficult often to distinguish preemption from defense. Obviously, no one is against—no reasonable person, no sensible person is against any country, certainly including our own, defending itself against an expected or a potential or a probable attack, and I think we need to be clear about that and we need to be clear, just as we need to defend ourselves, we need to be clear that we should defend ourselves and we should make clear to other countries and people that we will defend ourselves.
You know, if that requires defending ourselves before we are attacked, then that seems to me simply a question of tactics, not a question of morality or even desirability. It is simply a necessity if we are about to be attacked. I don't really understand the reason that preemption, so conceived, has gotten a bad name because preemption so conceived as defense is only common sense. And it is, I would repeat, inconceivable that anyone should argue that we should not engage in such defense, self-defense. And I suppose we will. And I believe that we will. You know, Sandy has suggested we should have allies, not just—not just coalitions of the willing, but allies that we can count on. Actually, I think we do have allies that we can count on. I think we have seen some of them in some of the coalitions of the willing, including the coalition of the willing that has been operative in Iraq. We see them in the reliable steadfast reliability of the United Kingdom (UK) and of Spain, which has—the Spanish prime minister and the Spanish government has been very staunch, and of Italy. Those are important NATO allies.
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We see that kind of reliability in allies in a good many other countries. I don't think we will probably have allies whom we can count on to stand with us at all times and for all occasions in all situations in all geographical locations. But I believe that we should value our allies and we should make clear to them how much we appreciate them. And we should also seek to solidify our alliances. I do not believe we should engage in threats against any country or any people except threats against those people who are committed to threatening us. And I think that as a democratic state, a democratic society who believes in human law and—I am sorry—in the rule of law and in human rights, we will continue to live by our own values and seek to do so in all situations including those that require self-defense.
And on that note, I would simply end my testimony, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Kirkpatrick can be viewed in the hard copy.]
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Ambassador Kirkpatrick. And thank you both for very thoughtful statements. Let me lead, going right to the heart of the last subject that Ambassador Kirkpatrick talked about and Mr. Berger talked about, which is preemption. Obviously, I think we are all for preemption if you define preemption as being a situation in which if you take the 9/11 attacks on the United States, we were somehow able to know about the decision to attack the U.S. and we were able to take preemptive action to destroy the people who were about ready to drive those planes into the Twin Towers, I think, Mr. Berger, you agree, you would take preemptive action in that situation.
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I know Ambassador Kirkpatrick, from her statement, would certainly take it. I think we all agree with that aspect of preemption, and in fact, I think Ambassador Kirkpatrick, your statement that it is part and parcel of defense is a very valid statement. Let's take another one. Mr. Begin decided to send that package of fighter/attack aircraft into the Osirak reactor in 1981 and destroy that reactor. Our information, when we took—when we took Iraq in 1991, was to the effect that, in fact, Saddam Hussein did intend to build nuclear weapons, that he, at that point, according to the United Nations, was about six months away from having one, and that—and I think we could conclude fairly strongly that that reactor was devoted to those ends, that is acquiring a nuclear system.
And now I also recall that after Mr. Begin hit that reactor, many of the world's leaders publicly deplored it, but privately they went behind their closed doors and breathed a sigh of relief. That is a situation that I think we are going to see recurring as we enter this new age of what I would call terrorists with high technology. And that the days of the Marquis of Queensbury rules, where you absorb the first punch may, in fact, in many cases, be over. Indeed, if I look at the definition of deterrence as used during the Cold War days, that presupposed a certain logic on the part of the Soviet Union, a logic and an inclination toward self preservation; that is, they knew that under the MAD doctrine, mutually assured destruction, if they threw the first rock at us, they would receive many rocks in return, which would destroy them.
Now that we are dealing with an enemy which, in some cases, as you both mentioned, don't care if they die or not, the idea of offering a strong retaliation upon being hit first has less importance than it did when we faced the Soviet Union, which we believed had a certain degree of logic in its analysis and in its thinking and would not risk destruction. So I guess my question to you is—and I would just ask—let's just take a real example. Striking the Osirak reactor in 1981 is, perhaps, a good example of what we might expect in varying scenarios in the future. Would you, Ambassador Kirkpatrick, and would you, Mr. Berger, if you were faced with that situation, say we should make that strike or not make that strike? Dr. Kirkpatrick, and then we will go to Mr. Berger.
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Dr. KIRKPATRICK. May I respond first. I don't know whether you recall, Mr. Chairman—no reason you should—but I was, in fact, the person who introduced the resolution in the United Nations Security Council which condemned Israel for having made just that strike. I introduced that resolution under clear and strict instructions from my government, from the President, quite specifically. I was—I will just say, I did it. And I will add that I had my doubts about it personally at the time. But anyone who has been in government knows that if you are going to serve in the government, then you follow the instructions of the President.
I will mention two other facts about that Osirak reactor. One, I just want to remind everybody that it was France who provided the Osirak reactor to Saddam Hussein on that occasion. The Israelis were concerned not to have casualties and they tried—they studied the scene in order to try to identify a time which they could make a strike without killing any people. And they identified a Sunday afternoon. There was just one person killed in that attack and that was a French man, a French scientist who was working on a Sunday afternoon on the installation of the Osirak reactor. That is sort of interesting. I also was present at the meeting of Gensa, which some people may know, in the occasion that Dick Cheney, who was Secretary of Defense at that time, was speaking and when he was finished he was—he said that he would like to simply add how often during the Gulf War he, then Secretary of Defense, thought about how much less dangerous the situation was for us because the Israelis had taken out that reactor.
And that was the closest thing to an apology I think that governments ever get, that—and I don't, myself, have any question that the position of Israel at that time with that reactor made it prudent for them to take out that reactor. That is a personal view.
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The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mr. Berger.
Mr. BERGER. Mr. Chairman, first of all, I absolutely agree with you that no nation has to absorb the first punch where they have reliable information of an eminent attack, eminent strike. I don't think there is any disagreement on that proposition. And as I pointed out in my testimony, indeed, in 1998 we struck at terrorist camps in Afghanistan based upon the intelligence that we had that bin Laden would be there and several hundred other al Qaeda operatives. That certainly was a preemptive strike.
The CHAIRMAN. Those were Tomahawk?
Mr. BERGER. Cruise missiles, right.
The CHAIRMAN. As I recall, there were no casualties, or there were limited casualties.
Mr. BERGER. Well, there were certainly casualties in the camps, yes. There were several hundred operatives killed according to the Intelligence Community. There were no casualties here, but there were casualties there. With respect to something like the Osirak attack, it may well be that that is an option that has to be taken. I would only suggest that we have a bunch of—we have a series of tools in our kit bag to deal with proliferation. And just as we are not right now bombing the Iranian nuclear facilities and we are not now bombing the North Korean facilities, as far as I know, you know, military action in that situation ought to be a last resort. But I wouldn't—I certainly wouldn't rule it out.
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I would say one last thing, Mr. Chairman. I think there is a difference when you are talking about deterrence between state actors and stateless terrorist groups. State actors, even Iraq, even North Korea, even Iran, have an address. And I do think that while deterrence may be weaker with respect to some of those states, let's say, North Korea, I still think that their annihilation is something that they take into account when they act. We are in a very different ball game with these now new global terrorist organizations that have no address. And I think that proactive action against—we call it preemptive, call it proactive action—against these terrorists cells wherever and whenever we are able to locate them is absolutely not only appropriate but imperative.
The CHAIRMAN. Okay. And just one point before I move on to Mr. Skelton. I think that what we have illustrated with this discussion is that it is a question of judgment. Even a very tough peace through strength, strong-minded administration which helped, which disassembled the Soviet empire was reluctant to countenance the Israeli strike on the Osirak reactor as Ambassador Kirkpatrick just described. And yet, and I remember vaguely the press releases from various countries, including our allies, who deplored that action. And yet, the historic analysis has been to the effect that this was probably a pretty good thing, and that the evidence that we uncovered after we took Iraq was to the effect that Saddam Hussein did intend to build nuclear systems, derive them from that reactor, and yet Mr. Begin was totally isolated when he did that.
My point is that we are going to enter, I think, into some very uncomfortable situations where it is going to—where our actions, preemptive actions, may be unpopular actions, may be actions that don't invite any collaboration or partnering from our usual allies, and yet in the end, turn out to be necessary actions. And I would just ask you if you don't agree with that principle. Understanding that every situation is different, that because of the leverage of technology, this killing technology, sometimes we are going to have to act preemptively in situations where in the days where technology wasn't as deadly, we might have had the luxury of waiting and of assimilating greater political support from our allies before we acted. Do you agree with that idea?
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Mr. BERGER. I do in essence, Mr. Chairman, but I do want to add one caveat here. What troubles me about the National Security Strategy is that it takes what has been those hard case-by-case decisions that you are talking about, an option the President always has in his drawer, if you believe there is an eminent threat, and it takes them out of the drawer and puts them up as a flag, a banner behind which America now defines itself. We are ''shoot first, ask later.'' and I think it is the elevation of——
The CHAIRMAN. Well, but this assumes that we have information. I mean, nobody's saying we should shoot first and ask later. I think Mr. Begin had some pretty strong information when he acted in 1981.
Mr. BERGER. The only thing I am suggesting, Mr. Chairman, is in terms of the national security doctrine itself, which is where we—the starting point for the hearing is that we have elevated an option into a doctrine. I think in doing that we have not thought carefully about the consequences.
The CHAIRMAN. Dr. Kirkpatrick, any comments on that?
Dr. KIRKPATRICK. No, Mr. Chairman. I basically agree with the statement that you made concerning this question, this aspect of the preemption. I think we must be ready to act when the situation looks very dangerous. I mean, that is—and that has got to be the decision of the President, I think. Any President must take that responsibility. It is an awesome responsibility, I believe.
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The CHAIRMAN. Thank you.
Mr. Skelton.
Mr. SKELTON. Mr. Chairman, there are two issues that need to be regarded concerning the potential of a preemptive strike. The first is how good is our intelligence, and the second is what will this do to our credibility with our allies and friends. And those are two balls that are very difficult to keep in the air at the same time. Do the two of you have any quick thoughts on either the intelligence challenge or the challenge of bolstering our friendship about allies in light of the potential strike?
Mr. BERGER. Well, Congressman, you know, we obviously are all now living in the shadow of Iraq and what at least to some degree seems to have been a collective judgment on the part of intelligence communities that overstated the circumstances, at least that is a good working hypothesis at this point. And it should obviously make us cautious about military action unless we are darn sure that we know we can prove what we believe to be the case. Again, I think in my mind there is a distinction between nation states and stateless terrorists. I think that if we have the opportunity to get Osama bin Laden, I don't care where he is, we ought to get him. And so, the same for his operatives. I don't think we need to ask anybody's permission to do that. That is self-defense. But I think when you are talking about, for example, invasion of Iraq, where the eminence is less clear, I think trying to get the support of our allies perhaps having done more to try to get the support of our allies would have been beneficial to where we are now.
The CHAIRMAN. Ambassador?
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Dr. KIRKPATRICK. Yes, I would only like to say in addition that it wasn't perhaps simply our intelligence agencies reports that may have, at least in retrospect or at least from now, from what we know now, seemed to exaggerate the danger, but it was certainly true that the United Nations Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM), the U.N. inspection team's reports seemed to exaggerate the danger. I have looked at those reports with some care in the period since the Iraq operation got underway, and their reports on Saddam Hussein's activities in the development of weapons of mass destruction go at least as far as anything I have read or heard about our intelligence agencies. There were a lot of people looking at this situation and reaching conclusions, virtually identical conclusions about Iraq's activities and their efforts to develop not only chemical, but also biological and nuclear, if possible, potential. As we know, they were working on the nuclear capacity in the case of the Osirak reactor.
I am myself enormously impressed with how difficult it obviously is to develop reliable information on the subject, how difficult it is to reach prudent judgments on the basis of the reports of the UNSCOM teams, the U.N. inspection teams on the one hand and our own intelligence agencies on the other. I think we all have learned something about this.
The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman.
Mr. Hefley.
Mr. HEFLEY. Well, it is a tough deal. You know, if you have got a football team, you study the film and you scout your opponent and you try to put together a game plan that will defeat your adversary on Saturday, and that seems to me what was done in this case—acting upon the very best intelligence that we had at the time. And Ambassador, you indicated and I think that is very true, we don't have as good an intelligence mechanism as we need to, particularly in that part of the world. But given the fact that we did have evidence that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and used them against neighbors and his own people, that he did have a nuclear program and we have had before us here, Mr. Chairman, a gentleman who was—who came out of the nuclear program in Iraq and testified before this committee that, yes, we were developing a nuclear program.
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Given the fact that there were 12 years of thumbing his nose at U.N. resolutions, and the fact that—maybe stronger than any of that—the fact is that knowing how that displeased us that he wouldn't come clean if he didn't have these things, why didn't he come clean and cooperate with the inspectors and not sneak things out the back door and all. But given all these facts, what should we have done in Iraq? Should we have just kind of gone on and on? And also the fact that we knew he hated the United States. We felt there was a connection between Saddam and al Qaeda.
And, in fact, one member of the Mossad, right after September 11 he indicated without any reservation, oh, yes, Saddam and al Qaeda are linked. That is part of Saddam's. And now we seem to have evidence that there was a link between the two and, in fact, found the largest terrorist camp that has ever been found in the world after our troops went in there. Given all of this, what should we have done? Did we do the right thing or should we have exercised more restraint or what should we have done?
Mr. BERGER. Congressman, I will answer first on this one. I do believe Saddam Hussein represented a threat to the region based upon his history and his capabilities we believe that he had and his intentions, which I think were to dominate the region. So I have supported the regime change as appropriate objective of American policy really since the inspectors were thrown out in 1998. And I supported the President in the buildup to the invasion.
And although I am not running for president, I would have voted yes on the resolution, even though I don't have a vote. Having said all that, I think what we did was—I think that this was not such an eminent threat, the kind that the chairman is talking about that we could not have taken the time to do this right. And I don't think we did. I don't think we took the time to build a coalition, a true coalition. We had four countries on the ground. We had, you know, countries, most of whom, you know, many of whom gave us airspace and didn't shoot our planes down when we went over their air space.
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But the lack of that coalition was not terribly important in the war because we own the game when it is military. We don't own the game now that it is trying to make a peace. And I think it is unforgivable that we didn't have a plan for the day after. Unforgivable, in my judgment. So I was for Iraq, but I was for doing it right. And I don't think we have done it right.
Mr. HEFLEY. Any comment, Ambassador?
Dr. KIRKPATRICK. No. I would simply say that I really don't believe we should ever go to war until we are—except as a last resort, but if we—if it looks as if it is truly a last resort, before an eminent attack on the United States, then I think we should go to war. And I think this looked that way. And I think there was a very great deal of—a very great deal of evidence to support the views that it looked like that was that way, that there wasn't, in fact, danger of an imminent attack. People don't talk much about how dreadful a man Saddam Hussein was and how violent a man he was, how many people he had killed, for example, with chemical weapons as he killed five million Kurds and Shiia after the first Gulf War.
So, he is not a man that you want to give too much of the benefit of the doubt to. I found this a very difficult situation. You know, I was glad I wasn't President, let's put it that way. I am often glad I am not President and I was glad then that I wasn't President. I think there are some dreadfully difficult decisions and choices that any President has to make in times like ours. And I thought this was a very difficult decision. You know, I don't—I thought about it. I have been working on a book that deals with—partly with the first Gulf War, and this is one of the subjects. And I—you know, I was very impressed with how long President Bush's father waited to take action against Iraq in its period after its invasion of Kuwait.
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During that period of some months, five months or so, there was—you know, Kuwait was devastated actually. There were many people killed and raped and tortured and kidnapped, and that is why, you know, and while we were testing out whatever—well, while we were accumulating allies, most of which we never used, most of which were never used in that conflict. And so, you look at that and say, and I have, as a matter of fact, written in a text that I have a draft of that I thought that the price for waiting that long to accumulate that many allies had been too high.
So I think these are, you know, intensely difficult questions and I will not criticize the President for this decision, these decisions. I think that they were sensible decisions. I think that we are still accumulating evidence, by the way, on the whole question of the relationship between Saddam Hussein, Iraq and al Qaeda, and I think that there is quite a lot of evidence to support that and that ought to be, you know, give everyone second and third grounds for second and third kind of reflexes about their opinions about whether it was precipitous or whether it was prudent.
Mr. HEFLEY. Thank you.
The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman.
Mr. Spratt.
Mr. SPRATT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank both of our witnesses for very complete and provocative statements. Ambassador Kirkpatrick, you say in your testimony an effective deterrent has never been as important to Americans as it is today. And yet, it kind of begs the question, what kind of deterrent? The deterrent really doesn't have the same—certainly it is not the deterrent that we came to understand vis-a-vis the Soviet Union in the years of the Cold War. It is a completely different kind of deterrent against a different kind of enemy all together. How do we deter terrorists?
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Dr. KIRKPATRICK. How would we deter Saddam?
Mr. SPRATT. Terrorists.
Dr. KIRKPATRICK. Terrorists, right. Frankly, I don't think—I think that is a misstatement in that testimony. I read it myself just as I was coming in here. It was done in my office in my absence and I don't believe that that is the case. I agree with you and in your correction of that statement. I don't really believe—I think an effective deterrent is important. But I don't think that it is more important than ever has been. I believe that was important, terribly important to have an effective deterrence with the Soviet Union. And I think it has been important to have an effective deterrence with Saddam Hussein as a matter of fact. He would probably have blown up the world already if we hadn't—if we and others hadn't had an effective deterrent.
But I don't think that a deterrent—the deterrent isn't enough in dealing with terrorists because terrorists don't value their own lives. And they don't—and that is, I think, the point that Mr. Berger was making earlier, about the difference between terrorist groups and states.
Dr. KIRKPATRICK. There are more grounds for thinking that a state has something in its own territory that it will value, or somebody, whereas terrorist groups—I don't think there is very much reason to believe that we can deter terrorist groups with standard forms of deterrence.
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Mr. SPRATT. I take it though that you would advocate relentless pursuit, crushing retaliation.
Dr. KIRKPATRICK. Absolutely separate. Did we make a mistake then about averting our attention, our efforts and diluting them somewhat by going off on this pursuit of Iraq when our real objective at the time, our number one objective, everyone would have agreed was Osama bin Laden, not Saddam Hussein?
No. I really believe Saddam Hussein was a major target actually and a legitimate major target.
Mr. SPRATT. Do you think the pursuit of Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda has suffered as a result of the——
Dr. KIRKPATRICK. You know, I don't know that, and frankly I doubt if you know it. I don't think any of us knows that for sure. We can imagine it might have been the case or not have been the case, but I don't think we know. I think we probably did everything that it was possible to do in the pursuit of Osama bin Laden at the time that we were pursuing him very intensively when he was up in Tora Bora, and I think we should have done everything that was doable, but I think we did do everything that was doable. We are still doing it, I hope.
Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Berger, you advocate new kinds of alliances or new alliances against terrorism. That is a completely different alliance from the kinds of alliance we had to contain the Soviet Union. What sort of alliance can we strike that would be effective against terrorists, both militarily effective and also act as a deterrent against terrorist actions against us?
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Mr. BERGER. Well, partly, Congressman, I think that we need to define NATO's mission now clearly in terms of the war against terrorism and counterproliferation. There may also be peacekeeping missions that NATO needs to engage in, in and around Europe, but I would seek to define NATO's mission in the post-Communist, post-Cold War world now, clearly in terms of fighting against terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. I think it is unfortunate that when after 9/11 NATO for the first time invoked Article 5, an attack on one is an attack on all, instead of embracing that we essentially said thanks but no thanks, we will fight this war by ourselves, and the problem is we have overwhelming military power. Our staying power right now is more questionable than our firepower, and when we do this within the context of an alliance, it seems to me we may have more staying power.
Mr. SPRATT. I thank you both.
Mr. HEFLEY [presiding]. Mr. Hostettler.
Mr. HOSTETTLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have a question for both of you, and that is that there seems to be a new paradigm at play today; that is, for example, a citizenry of a nation-state in the case of Iraq, for example, is not held responsible for the actions of their government leaders. In this case, a regime is our enemy. Iraq is not our enemy, and that is different in that in World War II, for example, there was Nazi Germany, there was fascist Italy, there was imperial Japan. We destroyed not only the regime that was in place, but, in fact, in all three cases, and especially Japan, we remade the culture. We destroyed cities and killed hundreds of thousands of civilians, and as I said earlier, we remade the civilization in those three countries, especially as I said Japan, coming from a divine imperial leader to the system they have today.
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What are the future implications, especially when we see today that our men and women continue to be over in Iraq as we rebuild Iraq and once again we do not hold the people responsible, we hold the regime responsible. What are future implications for this new paradigm? And second, is there a nation-state that is in existence today that is of a concern to the national security of the United States that is of the old paradigm? And that is—and with that question, do you think that Iraq—when all of this is said and done, will Iraq have their same relationship with the United States that the relationship is with Germany today, Japan today, Italy today with the United States?
Dr. KIRKPATRICK. First of all, I think that is impossible to predict, but I would note it depends somewhat on what we do before we leave Iraq and then what the Iraqis do. Those were long occupations, don't forget. You don't have—you don't affect a culture without time and a great deal of effort, and both a lot of time—five years, I think, in the case of Japan, maybe more; a number of years in the case of Germany. We stayed, we worked, and we succeeded, and we need to bear in mind also that certainly in the case of Germany and Italy we were dealing with countries which had in their own past some experience with democratic values and democratic institutions in fact. Germany had the one period of a republic, and even in—and before that, the government of laws, and Italy had had a period of experience with democratic institutions.
No, I don't think we can say that Iraq has had a period of experience with democratic institutions, although let me say, gentlemen, if I may, ladies, my late husband was invited along with some three or four other American professors who were concerned with constitutional law and constitutional matters just a few—a year before Saddam Hussein consolidated power in Iraq, and he was invited and so were his fearful colleagues. One was the Chief Justice—not Chief Justice, but Justice William Douglas. There was another Justice of the Supreme Court that was on this group. They were invited to deliver lectures in the law school in Baghdad on constitutional government, and Iraq at that time was working really quite hard on the development of constitutional monarchy. And my husband and the other Americans who participated in this lecture series were very, very favorably impressed with the law school faculty and also with the students and with their understanding of the concepts of the constitutional—you know, constitutionalism and constitutional government and so forth. So there may be more experience in that before Saddam Hussein than most of us are aware of most of the time.
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As a political scientist I would simply say that we know that it helps a great deal in establishing a stable democracy if the country has had some prior experience with democratic institutions, and I think that we need to take maximum advantage of that. There were probably some experience with democratic institutions or constitutional institutions in the colonial period when Britain was the colonial power, and I think we need to investigate this and take maximum advantage of it.
Mr. BERGER. Congressman, first of all, those were very provocative questions and worth thinking seriously about. Let me just add two observations, one with respect to taking responsibility. We are obviously not going to hold the Iraqi people responsible for the repressiveness of—repression of Saddam Hussein, although we presumably will hold senior Iraqi leaders. But sooner or later the Iraqi people have to take responsibility for security in their country, and I think one of the things that concerns me is if it looks like we are heading for the door, if it looks like our exit strategy is exit as we mission 20,000 Iraqi security people a week and start talking about drawdowns, we are going to, I think, make it less likely that Iraqis will take responsibility for stopping Iraqis who are destroying their own future. So I think ultimately Iraqis have to take responsibility for their future.
The second point I would make, in terms of what other countries fit the paradigm, the problem it seems to me with having shifted the rationale post hoc on this invasion from weapons of mass destruction to tyranny is there are a lot of tyrannical governments around: North Korea, Burma, Congo, Zimbabwe, Cuba, Belarus, some of the Stans. So paradigm—if the reason why we went to war is what the President said originally, which was to prevent Saddam Hussein from giving weapons of mass destruction to al Qaeda so that we wouldn't have a September 11 two with biological and chemical weapons, that was the case he made to Congress and the American people. Now, the case is we went there to liberate the Iraqi people from tyranny. If that is the rationale, I am not sure how I distinguish in my own mind why we shouldn't go invade Belarus or why we shouldn't intervene in the Congo where millions of people are being killed. It is the problem with having—in my judgment, having justified this war on one term, and now because we have not been able to locate the weapons of mass destruction suggesting that really our purpose all along was simply to liberate the Iraqi people. There are a lot of oppressed people in the world, and I am not sure how I would answer your question as to where you draw the line. If the principle here is the United States has a duty to liberate oppressed people around the world, I don't know where you draw that line. It takes humanitarian intervention to a whole new plane.
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Mr. HOSTETTLER. Thank you.
Mr. HEFLEY. Mr. Meehan.
Mr. MEEHAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to both witnesses. I will say it is refreshing to have people before the committee who aren't presently working for a sitting President or, for that matter, running for election the next year or the year after that. So I have enjoyed the candid testimony of both the witnesses.
Mr. Berger, I want to thank you for the piece that you have given the committee from your upcoming book entitled ''What We Stand For,'' and from my perspective, I think you hit the nail on the head when you say that we need to rebuild our international alliances and treat them as an asset, not a liability. And I agree that we should pursue our objectives more toward international alliances, the United Nations, which the United States played a lead role in creating and which has served our interests well over 60 years.
How do you think the United States could best go about repairing its relations with the international community after, I think we would all agree, that relationship has been damaged on the question of Iraq, Kyoto Protocol, the International Criminal Court? How do we go about repairing our relations—international relations with the rest of the world?
Mr. BERGER. I think it is a combination of a number of things. Number one, it is simply a question of our posture. I don't mean whether we stand up straight, but it is our posture toward the rest of the world. Are we dismissive or are we inclusive? Is our attitude one that you are with us or against us, or is it rather that we seek to build coalitions around us, not coalitions against us. So part of it is a matter of just our posture.
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Number two, I do think that we have—that NATO remains our core alliance. We need to sharpen the new definition of NATO's mission and agree that this really is to the 21st century, what stopping communism was to the second half of the 20th century.
Third, I think we have to recognize that there are—if we want others to care about our strategic interests, we have to care about their strategic interests. So instead of walking out of a Kyoto convention, let's stay inside the tent and negotiate it until we get to a situation in which we believe we can sign it. We have far more influence inside the tent trying to change and alter and improve these agreements than outside. And I would just say as a footnote we have disparaged treaties, particularly the arms control treaties, a great deal in recent years, in the last two years, and yet it is the nonproliferation treaty we are now using with Iran to try to get it to stop its nuclear program.
Mr. MEEHAN. Ambassador Kirkpatrick, I understand that in May of 2000 you signed a report entitled ''Ending Syria's Occupation of Lebanon: The U.S. Role,'' calling for the possible use of military force to disarm Syria of its weapons of mass destruction and to end its military presence in Lebanon.
I supported the resolution authorizing force against Iraq and probably because I thought that the evidence that had been presented to the world and to the Congress and to the American people on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction could pose an imminent threat. Now it seems that we are not so sure that the intelligence was correct.
We can't treat the idea of preemptive war lightly and we risk ending up in complicated, difficult problems like the one we are facing in Iraq. I was wondering, does Syria in your view represent a clear and imminent risk, and does it warrant preemptive attack?
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Dr. KIRKPATRICK. Mr. Congressman, I don't believe I ever signed anything that advocated going to war against Syria. I have advocated and dealt with signed statements advocating an end to Syria's occupation basically of Lebanon, which I think is an outrage and should be ended. And I have certainly—I certainly advocate that myself. I think that Syria has stripped Lebanon of any kind of the characteristics of a sovereign state and deprived it of self government basically and imposed what amounts to a kind of a public government. But I don't think I have ever thought that Syria had seriously menacing weapons, and I don't think I ever advocated anybody going to war with Syria.
Mr. MEEHAN. What could we do to help the people in Lebanon? In other words, how would you propose that the United States——
Dr. KIRKPATRICK. Well, one thing I thought—I thought about this when I was in the United Nations quite a bit, as a matter of fact, and one thing we could do is talk about it. We can talk about the fact that Syria has basically imposed on Lebanon an occupation, which is the—it is the longest occupation in that area and it is almost never mentioned. And not only that, but Syria has imposed a very harsh occupation in the area. I was also personally very upset about the extent to which Syria was providing access to American troops and American diplomats and journalists who were being attacked by terrorists and killed often; that is, kidnapped, held hostage, tortured. And what we thought we knew was that Syria was providing access to terrorists basically from—who were entering Syria from Iran, but I thought we ought to talk about it at least. That is really what I advocated, was talking about it, and that is what I did and that is what I recommend to you to do, too.
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Mr. MEEHAN. Thank you, Ambassador.
Mr. HOSTETTLER [presiding]. Thank the gentleman. The Chair recognizes its gentlelady from New Mexico, Mrs. Wilson.
Mrs. WILSON OF NEW MEXICO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Berger, you have said something in an answer to a previous question that left me somewhat stunned and breathless, I must admit, coming from a former National Security Adviser, and I wrote it down because it was just almost incomprehensible to me in the light of the last decade of history. That is it is in your mind with respect to Iraq unforgivable—is the word that you used—unforgivable that we didn't plan for the day after. And what stunned me about this statement is that in 1999 I was here when the previous administration authorized a limited air strike to deal with a largely humanitarian crisis in Kosovo where we had had civil strife that resulted in about 3,000 people dying in the three years leading up to those air strikes. And in the period of time that America was conducting this air-only operation with a humanitarian objective, 15,000 people died and a million more were driven from their homes. If it is unforgivable for this President to have conducted the operation that he did, how do you look yourself in the mirror when you brush your teeth in the morning given what happened in Kosovo? I don't understand how you can make that judgment, given what happened in Kosovo.
Mr. BERGER. I am sorry. Finish, Congresswoman. You and I obviously have different views of history here. The fact is that in Kosovo the Serbs were on the edge of and were beginning to expel almost a million people from their homes, ethnically cleansing an entire population as they had done in Croatia and Slovenia before, and we acted to prevent that. We acted with an air campaign, because we believed an air campaign was the most effective way to get the job done. And the fact is it got the job done. We won. And as a result of that, the Kosovars came back to Kosovo and the Serbs left Kosovo, and we had a NATO-led force in Kosovo which remains there. We are now less than ten percent of that force. Not one American has been killed in eight years of that operation.
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So if ''unforgivable'' is too strong a word for you, I am happy to say it was a mistake. It seems to me it is a little bit apples and oranges. You don't agree with the Kosovo policy. I am happy to sit down with you and talk till we are sick of talking to each other about Kosovo. Whether Kosovo was right or wrong it seems to me does not address the question of why we did not have a plan for the day after in Iraq.
The fact is the State Department had a plan, which apparently was ignored by the Pentagon. Months of planning went into it. This is the sixth peacekeeping operation, Congresswoman, we have done in ten years. It is not like we haven't done this before. And we have made mistakes in some of those peacekeeping missions, and we have learned things in other peacekeeping missions like Bosnia and Kosovo and Afghanistan. None of that was imported into our planning.
Was it a surprise that there was looting? That was not—should not have been a surprise. Was it a surprise there would be a counterinsurgency? That should not have been a surprise.
So if ''unforgivable'' has a moral connotation, I will use a different word. I think it was a gross mistake to not have a coherent, well-developed plan for what we would do the day after the statue fell in Baghdad.
Mrs. WILSON OF NEW MEXICO. Mr. Chairman, I have got to say, having seen both these administrations and both teams, the planning has been far superior to what we saw in the previous administration, not only for the day after but for the day of, and to have a limited air operation against a door-to-door campaign of ethnic cleansing, sir, in your own words was a mistake.
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I yield the balance of my time.
Mr. SKELTON. Would the gentlelady yield?
Mrs. WILSON OF NEW MEXICO. I would be happy to, sir.
Mr. SKELTON. You may not know I sent a letter to the President on September the 4th of last year spelling out the challenges of the aftermath and a second letter on March the 18th of this year to the President spelling out the issues and challenges of the aftermath. Seven of those issues that I spelled out sadly have come to pass.
Mr. HOSTETTLER. I thank the gentlelady.
The Chair now instructs the committee that there are three votes in order. The Chair also asks the witnesses if you both would be able to stay for approximately 20 to 25 minutes while members vote. The chairman will be back to retain his seat and conduct the hearing. Is that possible?
Mr. BERGER. It is fine.
Mr. HOSTETTLER. I thank you both. The committee is now recessed.
[Recess.]
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The CHAIRMAN [presiding]. Okay, folks, we will continue with the hearing, and we want to apologize to our guests for the votes, but that is life, life on the Hill here.
Dr. Snyder, you are next.
Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, if I might, I would like to ask unanimous consent to have two statements by Congressman Larson who could not be here inserted into the record.
The CHAIRMAN. Without objection.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Larson of Connecticut can be viewed in the hard copy.]
The CHAIRMAN. We really appreciate you being here today. I woke up today listening to National Public Radio (NPR) announcing that Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz was going to be here for this hearing, but I knew of course that wasn't true, because this thing changed daily, and we have a situation where the hearing was to be on this document, the National Security Strategy of the United States of America, put out by the administration a year ago, but we can't get anyone from the administration who wants to come up here and testify on it. Now, I don't know if that means they don't agree with the document, they don't understand the document, they think it needs to be new or they don't want to see us because of what is going on in Iraq, but we really appreciate you being here even though we went from State Department, Defense Department to Treasury Department and you all are here today, and we really appreciate it.
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Dr. Snyder, you could just say that we traded up.
Dr. SNYDER. We traded up. That is right. I appreciate it.
Mr. BERGER. I want to keep the transcript of that, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. SNYDER. I want to ask—I guess I need a bit of a tutorial here. You began by both of you talking about the preemption and the chairman made elusions to it. It seems to me that there has been, oh, I don't know—I don't want to say sloppy language, because that implies that somebody did something wrong in the last couple of years, but it seems like language that we all use commonly gets used in such a way that it no longer becomes a term of art. Let me just kind of run through what I mean by that, and then you can give me a tutorial on where I am wrong. It seems like when you are looking at them, Iraq or whoever the potential adversary is, you look at their capabilities and their intent, and at the time I think everyone thought they had capabilities.
So then we get into a discussion of intent. So I have heard different words describe what we thought the intent was or the objective of Iraq was. I heard grave and growing danger, I think the President used in his speech. I have heard Secretary Rumsfeld use both imminent and immediate. I heard on, I guess Fox News a week or two ago, the administration say, oh, they never used the word imminent. They clearly did before this hearing here. I will read some of the statements Secretary Rumsfeld said a year ago, September a year ago.
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Some have argued that the nuclear threat from Iraq is not imminent, that Saddam Hussein is at least seven years away from having nuclear weapons. I would not be so certain. He says—goes on to talk about biologicals: But we should be just as concerned about the immediate threat from biological weapons, that Iraq has these weapons. But he says no terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people and the stability of the world than the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
So clearly the administration did use the word ''imminent'' and did use the word ''immediate,'' and then you also have the situation, I guess, the one that is beyond imminent or immediate, is an actual attack. So that is how you look, I guess, at the Iraq side, grave and growing danger, imminent, immediate, and actual attack.
Then we have the words that describe our attitude toward them. So I have heard it described as a war of prevention, that in fact perhaps we would have been better off if the President had used the phrase ''the war of prevention'' rather than a ''war of preemption.''
Then we also have the discussion of preemption, and people talk about that. They talk about it like, Ambassador Kirkpatrick, you did, that we always have that right to take on people that we think are massing across the border, or if we had interrupted a Japanese fleet and knew what their intentions were, we would not have waited for them to attack Pearl Harbor, and then we have the actual self defense when there is an attack.
Now, Ambassador Kirkpatrick made a comment that that includes things when you know there is a probable attack or an expected attack. But you also said a potential attack. I think I would disagree with that. A potential attack would—we have people all over the world that could potentially attack us because of capability, but may not have an intent.
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So you have prevention, preemption, self defense. Then we have also heard discussions—I guess it is Thomas Friedman who wrote the most about it in the popular press—a war of choice versus a war of necessity, which I think gets mixed into this also.
And then the final thing that complicates it for me—and I think it may have been General Clark, but I am not 100 percent sure, who testified before this committee a year ago before the vote on the resolution—but it may have been someone else that said, well, we shouldn't be talking about this preemption doctrine with regard to Iraq anyway because Iraq is its own breed of animal. We had a war against Iraq. They lost. We had a series of U.N. Resolutions that they haven't complied with. We now have absolute air superiority over Iraq. We have had a mini-war going on with them in terms of taking out air defense, and we have U.N. inspectors in there that they are not complying with, and this preemption doctrine really does not apply to Iraq. That is its own distinctive entity.
So that is a long way of saying, if you could give us a tutorial on these word choices in terms of are these terms of art or are they just words that we can all use interchangeably: Preemption, prevention, war of choice, war of necessity, self defense, grave and growing danger, imminent, immediate?
That is all I have to say.
Mr. BERGER. Well, let me take the first cut at that, Congressman. I have always thought of threat as being capability plus intent plus urgency. With respect to Iraq, we believe there was a capability. That belief may have been elevated—may have been greater than facts warrant, but we believe that. My view on intent with respect to Saddam Hussein was—and this gets to urgency, as well. I believe that Saddam Hussein intended to dominate the region. He did it—he tried to do it in 1996. He actually tried to do it again in 1994. People forget that we actually sent 35,000 troops to the region in 1994 when he started moving south again. So I never doubted that if given the opportunity he would continue to try to dominate a region that is of strategic importance.
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To me, the really critical question was urgency. I don't think that—I think that we had a window to deal with Saddam Hussein over a period of a few years. I think that the policy of containment was eroding. Therefore, it was not sustainable over a long period of time. But I don't think it was so urgent that we could not have got our ducks in a row, we could not have gotten Chile and Mexico lined up for that second resolution that put France in a position where it was so isolated that it would have, I believe, had to cave or be isolated.
So to me, the threat is capability plus intent plus urgency. I think with respect to prevention, preemption, self defense, I would say it this way, and I will use in all deference a medical metaphor. If you have elective surgery, I assume that the standard is higher than if you have nonelective surgery. That is, if you have got a patient who simply has to get back—you have to open up and do something, you do it. If it is elective surgery, the standard you would want to meet is higher. And I think when you have a war whose timing really is in your hands, it is incumbent for us to put all the pieces together. In this case, I think the pieces involved a broader coalition and a clear plan for what we would do with Iraq once we owned it.
Dr. KIRKPATRICK. I would add simply that I think that 9/11, the experience from 9/11, the experience of a sudden, an unexpected and undefended against attack on two major landmarks in two major American cities was a very great and even traumatic shock for—not just for many Americans but especially perhaps for a good many Americans that are responsible for our well being, and I have myself believed that the threshold for sort of accepted—acceptable risk in a situation went down after 9/11 because of the trauma of seeing the destruction and death that could be wreaked on American cities absolutely without warning. And I have thought that that almost surely played some role in the evaluation and response to the issue of sort of imminence of a threat by Saddam Hussein.
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You know, nobody thought we had an imminent threat from Osama bin Laden before his attack on the World Trade towers and the Pentagon. I mean, nobody. You could have taken a poll in the U.S. Congress or any place else, and you would not have found people who thought we were confronting an imminent attack. And I think that experience was very chastening for a good many policymakers who are responsible for defending Americans and America, and I think that it lowered the threshold, if you will, for defining what is imminent.
I believe—I may be wrong about that. Let me say I don't think there is definitive evidence to demonstrate that, but I think it is reasonable to suppose that this is the case. If you think about how many times we have heard not only the President, but a wide range of other people comment on aspects of our strategic situation after 9/11, I think it sort of confirms that view.
I personally believe that—I think that where Saddam's record becomes directly relevant to the United States and to judgments about whether we were facing an imminent threat, where it becomes most relevant, is when we look at the number of countries that Saddam Hussein had made war against, you know, the fact that he made war against Iran and used—there is no question that he used many chemical weapons. He killed—you know, we used to talk about yellow rain. I remember some people used to say, yellow rain, that was nothing but butterfly excrement. But it wasn't, of course. It was chemical weapons. He used chemical weapons against his own people, as we know very well, not just the Kurds either, but probably killed 5,000 Kurds and a good many Shia.
He made war against Kuwait, and he made war against many people and he never announced who he was going to make war against. And I think the fact that he had demonstrated this proclivity for attacking basically peaceable people, because not only weren't these people making war against him, left again the sort of heightened presumption of danger in dealing with Saddam Hussein. And so I think that another person in another state might not have seen sort of the imminent danger with Saddam Hussein and the undoubted impact of the various amounts of intelligence that we were receiving and that existed.
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And I would repeat, I think you have to take very seriously the files of UNSCOM. If anybody hasn't read those files, UNSCOM files from 1991 and 1992, I would urge you to do so. Look at those and then look at, you know, what our inspectors and so forth were saying about it. I think it probably looked too imminent—or too much of a possibility of an imminent attack for a President to be comfortable in taking no action. This is the way I have imagined it.
Mr. BERGER. Congressman, could I add one more observation to your question, because I think it is an important one? I do believe that after 9/11 the administration saw a window of opportunity to move based upon the anxiety of the American people in general, and I think in that context uncertainty became the reason for action, not a reason for inaction, and I think it was used for that purpose.
How many times do we hear the Vice President say, you know, we don't know and it could happen tomorrow and we can't—what we don't know could hurt us? And I think one of the reasons quite honestly why we saw this so differently from our European allies is that for our European allies uncertainty was a reason for hesitation, for letting the inspectors do their job, for trying to find out more. The American people, because of 9/11—this is not entirely, I think, justifiable. I am trying to explain something rather than justify it. Because of the anxiety and sense of vulnerability after 9/11, uncertainty, what we didn't know about the link between al Qaeda and Saddam, what we didn't know about his weapons of mass destruction was used by the administration as an argument for war, not an argument for prudence.
Dr. SNYDER. Mr. Chairman, if I might make a personal comment.
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The CHAIRMAN. Sure.
Dr. SNYDER. Ambassador Kirkpatrick made the comment that no one saw this September 11th and the imminent threat of Osama bin Laden. Your predecessor, Floyd Spence, in March of 2001, when we had Senator Hart and Senator Rudman here, very elegantly said after their presentation, I agree with everything you have said, but it is not the future, it could happen today. And that was six months before September 11th, and he passed away, as you know, prior to September 11th and didn't see his very accurate prediction sadly come true.
The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman. Let me make one observation based on what you said, Mr. Berger especially. There is a presumption here in this—or presupposition in your statement that it has been conclusively proven that there was no imminent danger. I continue to look at things like the intercept that Colin Powell read to the United Nations, which was an accurate intercept, in which a general in charge of a fairly large regional location of weapons called his subordinates, two colonels, the day before the November 26th visit by the inspectors and said these words: I am coming to see you in the morning, I am worried that we have something left. And their answer back was—or one of the colonels was, there is nothing left. We have evacuated everything.
Now, why do those words give you a feeling that there was nothing there?
Mr. BERGER. Mr. Chairman, you know, I saw the intelligence on a daily basis until roughly January 20th, 2001, and I certainly believe that Saddam Hussein had biological and chemical weapons as well as the capability—a biological weapons capability. I believe that at the time that his nuclear program was very inchoate. So that clearly was a judgment that was prevailing in our intelligence community and in intelligence communities around the world. Part of it was based upon, as Ambassador Kirkpatrick has said, what was not accounted for from UNSCOM. We know that there were—we know what he had, and we know what he explained. There was a big gap between what we know he had and what he had accounted for. So I don't reach the judgment that we won't find——
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The CHAIRMAN. Well, I predicted that we won't find it, and I predicted it then. But once again, conversations like that or intercepts like that——
Mr. BERGER. Well——
The CHAIRMAN [continuing]. Would lead you to believe that those colonels were talking about something and that they had evacuated something, which presumably was the stuff that they didn't want the inspectors to see. We seem to undertake this fiction today in the national discussion that conclusively presumes there was nothing there because we haven't found anything yet.
Mr. BERGER. I don't think there is any question that Saddam Hussein had an active and quite sophisticated deception program and concealment program when the inspectors were there and after the inspectors left. So, you know, I don't reach the conclusion that he was a reformed WMD user at this point.
The CHAIRMAN. Okay. Ms. Bordallo.
Ms. BORDALLO. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and I would like to welcome Ambassador Kirkpatrick and the Honorable Chairman Berger.
I have two questions today, and they focus on two concepts that we used to discuss frequently and now seem to have lost their utility, and that is containment and being able to fight and win two major theater conflicts. The validity of these ideas seems to have been devalued by our war in Iraq, and I am interested in understanding what role these two concepts still play in our strategy, the first with Iran and the second with China.
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Ambassador Kirkpatrick, if you would, can we contain Iran's terrorism and its weapons of mass destruction program, which together pose a threat to our allies in the Middle East? And if you could also comment not just on Iran, but also China.
Dr. KIRKPATRICK. Can we contain them? What was the second part?
Ms. BORDALLO. The two words that I used were containment and being able to fight.
Dr. KIRKPATRICK. You know, I hope so, first of all, but I think that again this distinction between terrorist groups and states—I think that it is more likely that we can contain a state by far than it is that we can contain a terrorist group.
Iran has not so far behaved in a reckless fashion. I think if we are very clear about the serious—about there being serious consequences for any kind of Iranian use of weapons of mass destruction or Chinese use of weapons of mass destruction, then it is more likely that we will successfully contain them. We have to try to contain them, and I would say that there is no certainty, obviously, in any of these issues, but I think it is likely that we can contain them. That is probable, I think.
Ms. BORDALLO. I think my question was, do you think that our focus now in Iraq has distracted our interest in these other troubled areas?
Dr. KIRKPATRICK. No. I don't really think so. And I think—I know. I mean, our government is very interested in Iran. They are very interested in North Korea. They are very interested in China. And I think that they keep a very close watch on these countries.
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Ms. BORDALLO. Mr. Berger, I have a question for you. I am concerned that our engagement in Iraq has consumed military resources that may be needed in another theater of conflict and that we have severely tested alliances that may be needed to respond to other threats to our national security. Do you think that the hesitancy of South Korea and Japan to assist us in a meaningful way in Iraq is an indication of their willingness to assist in a conflict over the Taiwan Straits? Are our allies prepared to fight and win a major theater conflict in Asia while we are busy reconstituting our forces following the war in Iraq? How can we better position our military capabilities to take this concern into account?
Mr. BERGER. Well, Congresswoman, first of all, I share some of your concern about an overextended military, and you start off by asking about the two major war—near-simultaneous major war strategy that has been part of our military doctrine for over a decade. I think it is taxed to the limit, and particularly the way we are using Reserves. I think when General Shinseki said before the war, we can't have a 12-division strategy with a 10-division army, I think he was speaking some wisdom here. And I think we have to look at whether or not we have a sufficient ready army at this point given the strains on it in Iraq.
And what I worry about, which is that as people go to Iraq for the third rotation, as Reservists get called up for the second time, what is going to happen to recruitment rates? What is going to happen to retention rates? What is going to happen to morale?
So I think for this committee, one of the really big issues is do we have a military that is commensurate with the challenges we face? That is number one.
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Number two, you asked about North Korea and South Korea. I think the larger problem that the South Koreans and the Chinese and the Japanese have with respect to North Korea, none of them want a nuclear North Korea, but they have seen a good deal of belligerent rhetoric out of the United States over the last two years: Evil Empire, ''I loathe Kim Jung-il,'' preemption doctrines. And I think that while none of them want a nuclear North Korea, neither do they want to collapse North Korea and cause the kind of turmoil that would cause, particularly across the border in China and across the border in South Korea, which is why I believe we need to put a serious offer on the table to North Korea for a nationwide intrusive inspection system which would validate a non-nuclear pledge. We need to be prepared to give something in return for that.
I think we should do that for two reasons. One, it is possible that they would accept that and in that case we would avoid the possibility of war. And second of all, without doing that, we are not going to have the support of South Korea and China if we have to use more coercive, whether economic or other means, because they simply will not believe that the problem merely is North Korea and not the United States.
Ms. BORDALLO. Thank you very much. Thank you both.
Mr. SKELTON. Mr. Chairman.
The CHAIRMAN. Yes. The gentleman is recognized.
Mr. SKELTON. May I chime in here? Based upon testimony in 1995 by Lieutenant General Ted Stroup, the head of the Personnel of the United States Army was advocating, and I agreed with him then and I agree with him now, that we needed 40,000 more Army soldiers. And our chairman on at least two occasions, if not more, has recommended two additional divisions for our Army. So I think there is an impetus toward this.
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Mr. BERGER. And I would hope that—Mr. Chairman and Congressman Skelton, I would hope that we could look at this in a bipartisan way, because we really are—I worry—again, put aside whether you think Iraq was a great idea or a lousy idea. We are there and we all agree we have got to stay there until we get it right. It is putting an enormous strain on our military. It is, I think, undercutting the capacity to meet a second contingency, although we would do it if we had to. And we may have to make some upward adjustments even though that is not a particularly popular thing, I suppose.
The CHAIRMAN. I think the gentleman from Missouri makes a good point. And, you know, in 1991 we had 18 divisions. Today we do have ten. We went down to ten in 1998, and I think it is clear that having divisions in reserve is never a bad thing, especially with the—and if you add up the amount of—the number of divisions we committed—you know, interestingly we fought both wars. When we look at the two major theater wars (MTW) strategy, we have fought Iraq now several times and we have fought Korea. It takes more than ten. On the other hand, we have other assets we can use, but that gives fewer options. So I think the gentleman makes a good point.
Mr. Langevin.
Mr. LANGEVIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I want to thank both of you for being here. I have had tremendous respect for both of you for many years going back to my days when I was in high school, in college. So—which wasn't that long ago.
I would like to just ask, if I could, in the area of how we deal with terrorists and the options that might be on the table. You know, when I think of them—and there may not be many options. You know, I think of the line from that movie The Terminator when they said they can't be bargained with, they can't be reasoned with, they don't feel pity or remorse, and they absolutely will not stop until they kill you. Unfortunately, this is the real world, it is not a movie, and we have limited options.
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It seems that the administration option in terms of dealing with them is this option of preemption, but everybody has a pressure point, and is there something that we are overlooking, the things that we could and should be doing to act to deal with terrorists that we are not considering?
And not only in terms of the terrorists as they exist today, but I am also concerned about the next generation of terrorists that are going to be recruited to the causes for the Osama bin Ladens of the world. What can we do to deprive the terrorists of willing recruits? You know, you have spoken about the option—the issue of leading by example, and when I think of the terms of the option of preemption, I think about not only military preemption, but also leading by example in preempting the area of health care and education around the world. And we talk about leading by example, that we need to be leaders in those areas, because I think that the problem with the terrorists and those that are disaffected around the world and who resort to terrorism is that they see the West, the United States—and I don't agree with this, obviously, but they see the West as going in, exploiting the region, using its natural resources, not caring about the poverty or the other people being able to achieve prosperity. And, again, I don't agree with that, but it matters little that the facts are on our side. The fact is that their anger is real, and clearly they are dangerous.
So what can we do and should we be doing to deprive these terrorists of future recruits in the first place?
And the final thing I wanted to ask you about with respect to Iraq, recently the administration announced a new plan for transferring power to Iraq through the creation of a provisional assembly, and it appears that the members of the assembly will be from Iraq's provinces to ensure greater representation of the nation's ethnic and religious minorities. I would like to hear your perspective on this planned method to encourage democracy in Iraq and what potential obstacles could stand in the way of success and what could the U.S. Government and the coalition and provisional authority do to make this plan work?
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Mr. BERGER. Let me—maybe we can split it up. Let me answer the first part. Congressman, I see this problem in concentric circles, this terrorist problem. At the center is a hard core of jihadist terrorists who are irredeemable in my judgment. I don't think we know how many of those people are, whether it is thousands or tens of thousands. I suspect it is in that realm, thousands. They have—their intent is upon inflicting grievous harm on the United States.
The second circle are the people and in some cases the states that give them support. And the third circle, I think the one you are referring to, is the larger community in which they operate, the extent to which they find support in that community or hostility in that community.
With respect to the inner circle, I think we have no other choice but to find them and get them and destroy them, and I think we also have to think about that not only just in terms of sending, you know, special forces off; we have to think about what is our military strategy, our doctrine, our capabilities, are we organized right as a military to do that mission.
Now, I think Secretary Rumsfeld was asking some of those questions, and I am glad that he is. Do we have to really have another transformation in the military to fight this new kind of enemy that hides in the shadows. But for the inner core, I think, the only answer is get them before they get us.
The second circle is those who provide active support, whether it is financial or others, and I think we have to be very aggressive in terms of trying to cut off the money and trying to put pressure on them, whether they are state sponsors or otherwise. It is hard to trace the money. I spent a good deal of time in the 1990's trying to do it. We had rudimentary knowledge compared to what we know now, but I think we have to step that up, as we have.
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Then there is the larger circle, and it is not the whole Muslim world, but it is a portion of the Islamic world that sympathizes with the resentment—has a resentment toward the United States, and I think there are three parts, three causes of that resentment: Power, policy and posture. Our power is we can't do anything about it. We are powerful, and that is going to engender a certain degree of resentment. It always has. It always will, and I don't think there is anything we can do about it. And as I said before, I don't think we should apologize for our power. We can adjust our posture much more openly to the world with our hand out, not the back of our hand, which I think is the way much of the world sees us now. And there are policies. More active involvement in trying to broker peace in the Middle East, for example, I think would go a long way to changing perceptions of the United States.
The fact is perceptions of the United States have eroded in the last two years. It is not my judgment. If you look at the Pew survey, which is very, very detailed and very, very extensive, admiration of the United States has plummeted in the last two years, particularly in the Islamic world. And that is why I say we have to isolate the extremists, not isolate ourselves. And you isolate the extremists, it seems to me, by joining with the rest of the world on those things that the rest of the world cares about, the gap between rich and poor, the AIDS epidemic, climate change. All these things which the rest of the world cares about we ought to be leading, making peace around the world.
If we are seen as leaders, not only in protecting ourselves, but leaders in trying to create a better world, I believe we would dissipate the sympathy of the terrorists and we isolate them. We can't destroy them, but we isolate them rather than isolating ourselves. I will leave it to Ambassador Kirkpatrick to—the Iraqi question or anything else.
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Dr. KIRKPATRICK. I have now forgot the Iraqi question. What was it?
Mr. LANGEVIN. Sure. With respect to the administration's announced new plan for transferring power to Iraq through the creation of a provisional assembly, and as I said, it appears that the members of the assembly would be selected from Iraq's provinces to ensure maximum diversity and participation and representation of the ethnic and religious minorities. And I would just like to hear your perspective on this plan as a method to encourage democracy in Iraq and what potential obstacles could stand in the way and what the United States and the provisional authority can do to make the plan work.
Dr. KIRKPATRICK. Well, I think the principal obstacles that stand in the way of democracy in Iraq are, as I implied already before, there has never been democracy in Iraq, and that is always a serious obstacle to establishing democracy in any country actually; but not only has there not been democracy in Iraq, what there has been is, you know, a dreadful kind of tyranny, which is very shocking, the same as a deeply shocking ruler.
I am thinking of his behavior on the occasion of his being sworn in as the maximum leader of Iraq, and he invited the ministers who had formerly held positions in the government to step into the other room, and then he invited the persons whom he had appointed to replace them to step into the other room. He gave each of the new ministers, you know, weapons and instructed them to wipe out their predecessors.
The Iraqis have been living for decades now under an incredibly brutal, incredibly harsh regime that is the opposite of any kind of tolerance or mutual respect or, you know, regard for each other possible. That, undoubtedly, is an obstacle to the establishment of, you know, a more humane Iraq. So what can we do about it?
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What we can do about it——
Mr. LANGEVIN. And are we moving too quickly in terms of transferring this provisional government?
Dr. KIRKPATRICK. Well, frankly, I think it would be a mistake to move too quickly. I think it takes time to introduce, you know, new ideas and new conceptions of government into any society. Actually, to change that political culture, I think, takes quite a lot of time.
I would like to see us take the time to introduce a really new—a democratic political culture in Iraq that—which means, you know—which means textbooks, and it means arguing; you know, making the case for a democratic regime in which Iraqis would have—each of them would have—more respect for each other.
I would like to see them introduce the conceptions of a culture in which, above all, the Iraqis themselves could trust each other, the conception of trust, conception of mutual respect, and I think this would take more time than—it sounds to me as if we are not prepared to invest.
I am worried, frankly, a little about this very—about what sounds like a rush to depart, and I hope we are not engaged in a rush to depart, because I think that could be a very serious mistake. I feel that, by the way, about Afghanistan, as well, which we did once rush to exit in Afghanistan, but it did not solve the—did not help us or help the Afghans to solve the problem of Afghanistan with more mutual trust and respect and more—you know, more peaceable society, because what we want above all is people who will live in peaceable institutions and live at peace with their neighbors.
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I believe very deeply in the whole concept of a democratic peace. I believe it is in our self-interest to introduce and promote democratic values in Iraq and in Afghanistan, let me say, because then there will be peaceable societies that live at peace with their neighbors, I believe. So I do not want to see us rush out of Iraq, and I hope we will not do that, okay?
Mr. LANGEVIN. Thank you.
The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman.
Mr. Taylor.
Mr. TAYLOR. Thank both of you for sticking around so long.
Ms. Kirkpatrick, you get me in a position where I have to take advantage of this great opportunity of having you here, and having read—and only read—a few books on the war in Afghanistan, you know, a lot of people say that bin Laden's hatred toward the United States comes from his feeling of betrayal; that apparently in his mind we cut a deal with the Russians that if they would withdraw from Afghanistan, that we would withdraw our support for the Taliban, and, if you recall, the puppet government, I think, stayed in power for an additional three years.
I was just curious. Having been in the Reagan White House, what would be your thoughts on that? Was there some sort of a wink and a nod to the Soviets?
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Dr. KIRKPATRICK. I do not know. I do not think so at all. We were not in those days winking and nodding at the Soviets.
Mr. TAYLOR. I am just curious.
Dr. KIRKPATRICK. Somebody recalled some negative concept, I think it was Sandy, as a matter of fact, Sandy Berger, termed the evil empire. It was Ronald Reagan's term, and it expressed the view of Ronald Reagan about the Soviet Union.
Mr. TAYLOR. Right.
Dr. KIRKPATRICK. And I would simply say no winking and nodding.
What the United States sought to do was to get the United States out of Afghanistan. That we certainly wanted to do.
Mr. TAYLOR. To that point, in a fairly widely read book by a former head of the Pakistani intelligence, he felt like there was some substance to that because the warehouse—or one of the major warehouses that had been used to supply the Taliban through Pakistan mysteriously blew up about the time of this accord, and that the weapons that the United States had been supplying through Pakistan were never replaced. And I am just curious as to your thoughts on all this, because——
Dr. KIRKPATRICK. Right.
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I would have to say I do not know anything about this.
Mr. TAYLOR. Second question, and this would be for both of you. The second and third questions would be for both of you. I am hearing from some folks whom I consider to be very knowledgeable in this town particularly with defense matters that have expressed the thought that they think the President is so intent on reelection that he would withdraw from Iraq prior to the election if he thought that is what it would take for him to be reelected. Now, that is the premise.
A question is, if that happens, in your opinion, does Hussein return to power or not?
Dr. KIRKPATRICK. Well, I hope that——
Mr. TAYLOR. I am not asking you to comment on the first, because that is someone else's opinion.
Dr. KIRKPATRICK. Right.
Mr. TAYLOR. My question is if, for some reason, the United States pulls out of Iraq prior to the killing or the capture of Saddam Hussein, does he return to power? Does he return to power?
Mr. BERGER. I think if we have not gotten him by now, I think there is a reasonable chance that could happen.
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I think the Iraqi people are watching us very carefully, and they are still afraid, clearly, and I think if they think we are heading for the door, they are really going to get panicky, and if we do head for the door, they are going to believe that Saddam, if not Saddam, Saddam and his henchmen, are going to come back.
And I think that is only one of many consequences of a premature departure. I also think we would have an Iraq that would be chaotic and maybe divided in civil war, and, perhaps most importantly, it would be a tremendous victory for terrorism. It would be the ultimate victory, in a sense, that truck bombs drove us out of Iraq. So, if we think that we are going to stop terrorism by prematurely leaving Iraq, I think just the contrary. I think prematurely leaving Iraq will exacerbate terrorism against the United States.
Mr. TAYLOR. Ms. Kirkpatrick?
Dr. KIRKPATRICK. Yes.
Well, I do not think we can leave Iraq at a time and in a way that would leave the return of Saddam Hussein as a possibility even. I do not think we will either, let me say.
Mr. TAYLOR. Well, what happens if we do prior to his killing or capture, in your opinion?
Dr. KIRKPATRICK. Well, as I said, I do not think we will, period.
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Mr. TAYLOR. Okay. Second question is—and, Sandy Berger, Mr. Berger, this kind of started on your watch or at least intensified on your watch, and that is dealing with Plan Colombia.
Mr. BERGER. With what?
Mr. TAYLOR. With Plan Colombia, which has since grown from a counterdrug mission to a counterinsurgency mission. That is a fact that has happened on somebody else's watch.
I note with great interest that in the past six weeks, I believe, five very high-profile members of the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC) have been either killed or captured. I also note with great interest that two nights ago, in two clubs that are frequented by American contractors working for the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and U.S. G.I.'s that are over there, hand grenades were thrown, and one woman was killed and a number of Americans, including, I am told from friends in Colombia, some of those people who fly those counterdrug missions were wounded.
Is this, in your mind, a one-time incident or the beginning of some sort of retribution against the Americans for the American involvement on behalf of the Colombian Government?
Mr. BERGER. Congressman, I will concede that I am not close enough at this point to the day-to-day reality to have a very sharp judgment about your question.
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Plan Colombia was designed by the Colombians and us, as you said, as a counterdrug strategy that was coincident with Pastrana's peace initiative, which failed. It obviously has taken on more of a counterinsurgency component in the last year and a half as President Uribe has basically asserted, you know, unless he has that capability, he is not going to be able to reassert the government's role throughout Colombia.
But I honestly do not know enough about the day-to-day situation there to make much of a judgment about what those——
Mr. TAYLOR. Fair answer.
Mr. BERGER [continuing]. Incidents may portend.
In 1998—in 2000, when we went to Colombia, the Colombians at that point were saying, we do not want you to be involved in the counterinsurgency. Now, I think, that has changed a bit under President Uribe.
Mr. TAYLOR. Ms. Kirkpatrick, your thoughts?
Dr. KIRKPATRICK. I really do not know enough to comment——
Mr. TAYLOR. Okay.
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Dr. KIRKPATRICK [continuing]. About that specific situation.
Mr. TAYLOR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and, again, thank you all for staying so late.
The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman.
Mr. Larsen.
Mr. LARSEN OF WASHINGTON. One more round, just one more.
Thank you for staying and tolerating our schedule.
I appreciate the chance to spend a few minutes asking a few questions and getting your answers today, and I want to just express how much I do appreciate that, because it has been a long day, I am sure, for you, and, knowing your schedules, you are probably not done with your day. So, again, I certainly appreciate that.
I want to try to bring a few threads together very quickly and with a couple questions, and that thread has to do with this hearing, which is regarding the national security strategy of the U.S. And we heard a lot about different dates in the past from 1986—1986 and June 1999 and May 1 and 9/11 and all sorts of things, but I want to talk about where we go from here as opposed to what has been going on in the past.
And with regards to Iraq, it seems that when we talk about the National Security Strategy and elevating preemption sort of to the top of that list, that Iraq should be the only country in the world so far that we are actually even willing to apply a policy of preemption to, but that when it comes to terrorism, obviously, I think we should—we should be applying that. So, my first question is: Should we, in the future, be bifurcating preemption; that is, preemption definitely for terrorists, but when it comes to our relationships with nation states, not putting that on the top of the list?
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The second thing I want to consider is, let us not consider that we have not found weapons of mass destruction, let us not consider that so far there is no linkage of Saddam Hussein to al Qaeda, but let us consider preemption as a massive security policy, and that Iraq has perhaps shown that preemption cannot exist in a vacuum. What I mean by that is preemption so far seems to be a use of our military policy, as opposed to a national security policy.
Saddam Hussein is gone, and that is a good thing. There is no question about the fact that I think the Iraqi people are better off for that, but right now the Department of Defense is scrambling to find a sufficient number of National Guard reservists to extend our overextended Active Duty military.
Come July 1, our U.S. military is set to become, at least in my view, a surrogate military for the selected Government of Iraq, because the capabilities of the Iraqi police force, the Iraqi civil defense, and the paltry numbers in the Iraqi military that we are recruiting could barely match the capabilities of the terrorist insurgency that emerged since May 1. So how do we exercise the preemption policy in the future against countries and avoid these kinds of problems while also ensuring their national security?
And finally—perhaps this is strictly for Mr. Berger; perhaps Ambassador Kirkpatrick will want to cover this as well—but getting back to this concept of preemption and what other countries think of it in terms of accepting it, as a real-life example, what are the advantages and disadvantages of India and Pakistan adopting a preemption policy, and what would be the implications for U.S. policy in that region, just to give us an idea of what it means to have a preemption policy out there running around the world?
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First, bifurcation; second, implications for our military as it applies to a preemption policy; and, third, give us your thoughts and a real-life example of other countries adopting a U.S. preemption policy other than the U.S..
Dr. KIRKPATRICK. Bifurcation?
Mr. LARSEN OF WASHINGTON. It is just a term. Trying to put a name on it.
Dr. KIRKPATRICK. Right.
Mr. LARSEN OF WASHINGTON. That is, in terms of Iraq seems to be the only country that we are willing to apply a preemption policy to, so if we are not going to apply it to other countries, which we do not seem to be doing, then should it apply only to terrorists as opposed to nation states?
Dr. KIRKPATRICK. Well, actually, first of all, I think probably strictly speaking we were applying a policy of preemption in Iraq——
Mr. LARSEN OF WASHINGTON. Yeah.
Dr. KIRKPATRICK [continuing]. Before the President went to the Security Council and this current conflict got under way.
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I do not know whether you would consider, Mr. Berger, your administration's policy of repeated bombing against Iraq to try to stop their destruction of the Kurds—that was in a very real sense preemptive. There was a lot of bombing that went on then, a whole lot of bombing, and I think—would you consider that a policy of preemption?
Mr. LARSEN OF WASHINGTON. I do not know.
Dr. KIRKPATRICK. They were not attacking us, that is for sure.
Mr. LARSEN OF WASHINGTON. I am referring to the National Security Strategy that we had before, and the purpose of this hearing today is to determine what we are doing with it and how we are going to apply it in the future.
Dr. KIRKPATRICK. Right.
Well, I am saying—I am trying to understand whether you consider any bombing outside of a war as part of our preemption strategy. Was it preemptive when the Clinton administration was bombing repeatedly the areas of Iraq, that the Iraqi Government was engaging in destruction?
Mr. LARSEN OF WASHINGTON. I am really not here to talk about what the Clinton administration did or what the Bush administration is doing. I am really trying to find out how we are going to apply this policy in the future.
Dr. KIRKPATRICK. Right. And I am just trying to understand what you are thinking about.
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I would not—you see, I do not really know what anybody is going to do in the future. I suppose that any administration which is confronted with harsh, brutal, murderous conduct on the part of a country or a group might well decide to take some action against them, military action against them; might well decide to start bombing, for example, them.
You know, then you get into the question of sort of how much military action can you take before you are making war against someone else.
I do not—I do not think that the United States—I do not think that any U.S. administration is likely to invoke preemptive strategy often or, you know, randomly or really just irresponsibly. I think it is likely to happen only in response to either an actual or an expected attack on some large number of people. That is what I expect. I do not expect that anybody is about to adopt a strategy of preemption as a general principle to guide U.S. military policy from this point forward.
Mr. LARSEN OF WASHINGTON. Mr. Berger?
Mr. BERGER. Congressman, first of all, I do think it is useful to make the distinction you are making, whether you call it bifurcation or not.
We are going to hunt terrorists. If we are going to—if we find them, we are either going to capture them, take them someplace, or we are going to kill them.
Mr. LARSEN OF WASHINGTON. Right.
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Mr. BERGER. Now, this is what Israel does, and there are some limiting principles in the democracy; like, for example, I would like the President to decide. If we go after people in these circumstances, I think it ought to be done consistent with the laws for these kinds of actions with appropriate congressional notification. It should not be a casual deal if we, you know, slam a cruise missile into somebody's car. But I do think deterrence does not work against these people.
I think that it is in some ways precisely because of what Ambassador Kirkpatrick says that I am so disappointed that we elevated this preemption argument in the first place by writing it in this national security strategy. It does not really apply to a lot of places, but the fact that we are waving it as a banner has consequences. It has consequences in Iran. It has consequences in North Korea. They are looking at us with fear, and so instead of having—maybe it deters them. I am not sure that it does. I think it accelerates their nuclear programs.
So, yes, I do think that there is a distinction between nation states, which I think can still be deterred, and individual terrorists, which I think have to be hunted down, but presumably, hopefully, within a procedural context that protects, that is appropriate to a democracy.
Implications on the military. I do—as I said before, I do worry, because I do not think we should be heading out the door prematurely. Whether you agree with going into Iraq or not, the consequences of prematurely leaving, I think, are just monumental for Iraq, for the region, and for ourselves. And so if that is true, we are going to be there for a long time, and I worry about the second rotation and the third rotation of those people into Iraq, and what that does long-term to our military.
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I think Iraq will have long-term adverse consequences for our military. And I want to get to South Asia.
Mr. LARSEN OF WASHINGTON. Sure.
Well, my point is, too, we cannot separate that from a policy——
Mr. BERGER. Correct.
Mr. LARSEN OF WASHINGTON [continuing]. Of preemption, but it seems we are separating that.
Mr. BERGER. Well, we should not, because, you know, the fact is, if we are attacked and we go to war, the American people rally, and if we had to go to a draft, we will go to a draft.
The American people are not ready for a draft to talk about, except for Congressman Rangel, in connection with Iraq, because people knew this was a war of choice, so I think you are right about that.
I think the third point I want to answer, because I think it is a very good way of illustrating, India and Pakistan are—if there is going to be a nuclear war someplace not caused by a terrorist, but between two nation states, it is going to be in South Asia, in my judgment. Here you have two countries—you know, the nuclear terror balance between the United States and the Soviet Union for 50 years actually was quite stable, except for one 13-day period in 1962 in the Cuban missile crisis. We knew what they had; they knew what we had. We knew their doctrine; they knew our doctrine. It really was a balance of terror, but a rather stable status quo.
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That is not the case with Pakistan and India. They do not know each other's capabilities; they do not know each other's red lines, and, in 1999, they came dangerously close. I do not know whether India knows exactly at what point if it goes into Pakistan—Pakistan was at an overwhelming disadvantage—conventionally strikes back with a nuclear weapon.
Now, to the extent that we are—let us get back to your preemption point. I was at the Rocunda conference with Secretary Rumsfeld, and I listened to the Indian National Security Advisor give a speech which sounded to me exactly like Colin Powell's speech to the United Nations. It was a bill of indictment against Pakistan. We have now provided essentially a template, which is if you can establish that here are the bad things that my enemy has done, I think it lowers the threshold of war.
To the extent people can say we are simply doing what the United States did in Iraq, we are going after our enemy before they go after us.
So just to sum up, I will go back to my original statement: Preemption as an option? Of course. And to go back to the chairman's phrase, on a case-by-case judgment basis? Absolutely. No one believes we should take the first punch, but I worry very much that we have announced to the world that we are—now the doctrine of the United States—and these things get simplified as they get out beyond Washington and they get to New Delhi—that we are going to go out after our enemies before our enemies come after us, and they have enemies, too.
Mr. LARSEN OF WASHINGTON. Thank you.
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Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The CHAIRMAN. I thank everyone, and especially our witnesses, for sticking around and having great endurance for the congressional schedule.
Let me ask you one last question before you go, because I think this, Mr. Berger. You mentioned this question of moral authority and the need to exhibit moral authority. Interesting thing about Iraq is that when we went in the first time, we underestimated the nuclear program, because, as I recall, the United States said actually we were only six months away—they were only six months away from having a nuclear weapon. We thought they were several years away at the time. And, in fact, there were very learned people, Senator Sam Nunn included, who advocated a patient, long-term approach, which in retrospect would have been disastrous. So we underestimated the first time, and we found no nuclear systems. And, in fairness, nobody in the administration stated that they had nuclear weapons the second time. They stated that they had a program, and I believe the program or the development program that could have produced something, I think it was three to five years.
But the question is, I think—this is an interesting question here. Nations—there is an old statement that no nation has friends, only interests, and it is—this whole discussion has taken place in the context of the idea that it is moral to protect your interests.
Now, here you have a country which has a leader who is the only person outside of Adolf Hitler, I believe, in the history of the world to have used poison gas to gas his own people. I would say that probably the pictures of those Kurdish mothers killed in midstride while holding their babies are as compelling as any pictures I saw at the death camps in Germany; the mass graves with thousands of people; the stuff we have seen on news reels lately where his people would push prisoners off buildings and make them fall 100 feet; the hanging of teenage kids because they wrote on the blackboard ''Down with Saddam,'' they were taken off and hanged by the neck until dead.
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So the idea that we—that we went in and took out somebody who was this bad is somehow unacceptable unless you can prove that he had—was on the verge of—developing a nuclear system, and that, I think, gives rise to this question: Is it more moral to take out a—to attack a nation, a country, on the basis that that country's leadership is cutting off your oil, for example, than to attack a nation because they are using poison gas to kill thousands of people?
In a way it is kind of a question that our grandkids and kids discuss—you know, you have probably heard it for years—and that is the question of, as kids study World War II, if Hitler had not attacked the rest of the world, would we have tolerated his destruction of the Jews in the death camps? Pretty tough question.
To some degree you have a question very similar today with respect to Iraq. If Saddam Hussein—if he had not thought that he—and I—incidentally, when the Iraqi general said, I am coming to see you in the morning, I think we have something left; and the colonel answered back, there is nothing left, we evacuated everything; I think that is certainly probative on whether there was something there. And I predicted long ago when they were doing these inspections that we would never find anything.
So my question to you is, which is the more moral, and which presents to the world—if you say you want to make an example to the world, which is the more moral example, an example that attacks another country because America is getting its oil cut off or an America that attacks and occupies another country because its leader was using poison gas to kill its own citizens? What do you think?
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Mr. BERGER. Well, Mr. Chairman, that is a very important question. I do not think that—I have no problem justifying what we did in Iraq on moral grounds, just as I have no problem justifying what we did in Bosnia and Kosovo on moral grounds. And we had some real trouble in this body convincing the majority; in fact, we failed to convince the majority of the House of Representatives that stopping the cleansing in Kosovo was a moral imperative.
We intervened in those two circumstances, both, because it was morally the right thing to do. We did not want the last act of the 20th century to be ethnic cleansing and because turmoil in the middle of Europe we thought was something that could be disruptive of Europe itself.
So I do think there are circumstances in which the moral imperative calls for us to use force. I think in those circumstances where the basis for the use of force is a moral judgment rather than a self-protection judgment, we have a greater responsibility to try to rally others to our cause so that we are not making moral judgments others are not making, but I do think that there are times when force can be justified to prevent a moral outrage.
I think one of the problems here, Mr. Chairman, is that, of course, that is not the argument that we made before we went to war. I mean, the fact is it was subtext. The President, on many occasions, talked about——
The CHAIRMAN. It was a big piece of the argument. A lot of time was spent on that.
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Mr. BERGER. The President talked about liberating Iraqis and talked about liberating Iraq, but if you look at the State of the Union when the rubber hit the road, the argument was we were going to Iraq to stop Saddam Hussein giving biological or chemical or nuclear weapons to al Qaeda so there would not be another September 11.
The CHAIRMAN. Of course. We voted in October.
Mr. BERGER. But the argument was a security argument. It was not fundamentally a moral argument. So all I am saying is I am agreeing with you that there are circumstances where I think the use of force, because—it is justified based on a moral imperative, number one. Number two, I think those circumstances are stronger if we have broader support. And number three, I think some of the problem here is the result of the fact that that is not the fundamental, central reason that we made the argument to go to war in Iraq.
The CHAIRMAN. Okay. Ambassador Kirkpatrick, any thoughts about this idea of what gives the strongest moral authority, the self-interest, the economic interest, or the reaching out to stop crimes against humanity?
Dr. KIRKPATRICK. I believe, Mr. Chairman, that the Americans have always been inclined to reject realpolitik as a grounds for our foreign policy and to feel that we are more justified in acting in foreign affairs with—forcibly or any other way—when we are doing good in the process.
I think we believe in the use of power to achieve humanitarian goals. I think that was the basis in which we involved ourselves in the Balkans, for example, and the basis in which we have involved ourselves repeatedly in conflicts. I think it was the basis, really, on which we involved ourselves in Iraq, as well.
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I think that the President used both arguments. I think he used—sometimes argued from the dangers of letting such a man develop weapons of mass destruction which might be used against us, but also the horror of letting such a man develop weapons of mass destruction which he might use in any dreadful way that he might conceive of.
I do not think even the President or almost anyone else has doubted that Saddam Hussein was creating humanitarian horrors in Iraq, and this was an important reason that we should act against him, that we had acted against him in the first Gulf War, in fact, okay?
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, and, to both of you, I think we have had a very useful discussion, and I think you have—it is always a privilege for the committee to have two leaders such as yourselves giving us your ideas and thoughts on this.
And let me just turn to the distinguished Ranking Member, the gentleman from Missouri, Mr. Skelton, to wrap this thing up.
Ike, do you have anything you would like to add?
Mr. SKELTON. It is mostly a word of gratitude to each of you.
This is—as we say, this is heavy lifting. You all have done a wonderful job in defining the issues and in helping us immensely, so we just cannot thank you enough. So we are very, very appreciative, and it is good to see both of you.
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The CHAIRMAN. And thanks for having good endurance. That is always important in our hearing.
Dr. KIRKPATRICK. Thank you. Okay.
[Whereupon, at 5:57 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]