US HIRC: Hearing on US Policy Toward Iraq

Hyde Opening Statement Prepared Opening Statement -	Lantos Opening Statement -
Bremer Statement Prepared Statement -	Full Transcript

U.S. POLICY TOWARD IRAQ

Hearing Before the
House International Relations Committee

September 25, 2003

REP. HENRY J. HYDE (R-IL): The committee will come to order. Unfortunately, I must open on a sad note. I know I speak for all members of this committee in expressing our condolences regarding the death of Aquila Hashimi, a member of Iraq's governing council. Ms. Hashimi was murdered because she had stepped forward to help her country, to help her country shed its legacy of dictatorship and to rejoin the community of civilized nation.

There are those who would use murder and terror to prevent the establishment of a new Iraq, freed from fear and bondage, but they can't succeed as long as the Iraqi people are committed to the revival of their country and will not submit to the re-imposition of the chains of the past. This dedicated person, this brave woman, should be and is an inspiration to us all.

It's now my pleasure to welcome to the committee Ambassador Bremer. We have already had the benefit of your testimony in the previous closed session of the committee and we look forward to your remarks this afternoon. I believe everybody here today, whether they support or oppose our policies in Iraq, understands the scale of difficulties that you face in your task of reviving a country devastated by decades of dictatorship and creating the foundation for a government capable of providing its citizens with freedom and security.

The available resources for such a monumental task cannot but be inadequate, as no sector of Iraqi society is without its gaping needs. The administration has asked for additional appropriations to ensure that our efforts in Iraq have a chance of success, and we're all eager to learn more about your plans for their use. The responsibility for rebuilding Iraq belongs, of course, ultimately to the Iraqi people, but we must ensure that our policies in Iraq have the necessary resources if they're to be successfully implemented. As the saying goes, failure is not an option.

My assumption is you would be the first to agree that not every decision has been perfect, not every problem has been foreseen, nor every forecast has proven accurate. I doubt that any blueprint exists or ever could exist that could anticipate all the obstacles to be encountered and prescribe the remedies to be taken. Similarly, no reasonable person would deny that public debate in a free society is not only permissible, it is essential.

I've expressed concerns regarding many aspects of our policies in Iraq and will continue, but I've been encouraged by the administration's obvious interest in listening to differing voices regarding what is best and adapting its policies in response, and I'm pleased to note that you have been a conspicuous example of that receptivity to serious discussion. Nevertheless, many critics appear to be demanding a standard of perfection I doubt they would have be eager to have applied to themselves.

I'm blessedly shortening my statement, so I'm passing page after page. We're constantly bombarded with demands that the U.N. be given a greater role. I have not seen a serious proposal advanced of how this would actually be accomplished other than by the U.N.'s taking an outsized role in determining how our resources and our forces would be used to implement goals not of our choosing. I can't imagine that the American people would react positively to such a proposal, but I will gladly leave to others the burden of selling such a novel idea.

Nevertheless, I would hope the U.N. and its advocates might soon provide an actual plan of action so that a little substance might be mixed into their assertion. By the way, I can't help but wonder if France erred in 1944 by not insisting that we secure the imprimatur of the League of Nations prior to landing at Normandy. As a further aside, I don't recall anyone in the days after Pearl Harbor asking President Roosevelt how much he planned to spend on winning World War II. That included the European theater and the Pacific theater, or what his timetable was for bringing the troops home.

It's an unfortunate reality the world long ago became accustomed to the idea that the responsibility for dealing with any problem anywhere rests almost entirely with the United States. Often it's regarded as ours alone, no other country need offer anything, not even mild applause, for participation imposes costs and risks and the calculation has usually been that there's more to be gained from standing back and allowing the U.S. to bear these costs and risks alone. No one would be happier than I to see France or Germany or the U.N. or any other power take on the responsibility of ensuring freedom and stability in some wretched corner of our globe, of bravely combating our common threats, of leading by example. But I'm afraid the roll call of those accomplishments remains blank. Even on the continent of Europe itself, home of our most unrelenting critics, we're still the guarantor of security for all.

It's an astonishing fact that not only have we freed the Iraqi people from Saddam Hussein's vicious dictatorship and liberated the entire world from the menace he presented, but that we have had to do so virtually alone, relieved only by our British allies and the few brave others standing with us. Far from receiving assistance, we are proceeding under a hail of stone thrown by countries which have previously benefited from our unilateral actions, our unwillingness to wait for others to brave the dangers, our refusal to surrender our fate and their fate to darkness. Many owe their very freedom to us.

It's said by many that we have no option in Iraq, but that's untrue. We always have options, responsible and irresponsible. I, for one, am grateful we've chosen the responsible one and hope that we have the endurance, despite all perils, to complete our task, even if we must do so alone.

And now it is pleasure to yield to the distinguished gentleman from California, Mr. Lantos, for his opening statement.

REP. TOM LANTOS (D-CA): Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. First I want to thank you for calling today's important hearing on Iraq.

I would like to begin by extending my warmest welcome to Ambassador Paul Bremer, who is doing an exceptional job under the most difficult circumstances. Mr. Ambassador, this Congress and this country is deeply in your debt and we are fully conscious of the enormous difficulties you face and the extraordinary skill and courage with which you have carried out your task. Thank you for your service to our nation.

Mr. Chairman, I fully agree with you that failure is not an option, and at times I wonder how many in our land expect omniscience and clairvoyance as we look ahead to the months for the balance of this year and next year in Iraq. There is an expectation of quick and easy solutions which of course flies in the face of reality. You made reference to Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Pearl Harbor.

I had occasion in recent times to be both in France and Germany, where I suggested that perhaps Mr. Chirac should go down to the Normandy beaches, get down on his knees and thank the Lord for the young American men who gave their lives for the freedom of France, as he looks at the endless rows of marble crosses and Stars of David representing the graves of our brave young soldiers in 1944. Or Mr. Schroeder should thank the United States for a few things we have done for Germany: saving Germany from Hitler, providing Germany with the largest philanthropic project in human history, the Marshall Plan, providing the German people with two generations of our protective military umbrella under NATO, seeing to it that the Soviet Union left East Germany, and finally unifying Germany. But apparently gratitude is not a virtue of statesmen.

Mr. Chairman, there are two issues I would like to deal with, and I don't anticipate Ambassador Bremer to answer them, because they are, in a sense, above his pay grade. The two issues are the issue of lack of shared sacrifice as we conduct the war in Iraq, and what to me is the counterproductive and irrational opposition of the administration to having loans rather than grants deal with reconstruction expenses.

Mr. Chairman, the September 11th tragedy, the war in Afghanistan and now the war in Iraq should have shocked our nation into a period of shared sacrifice and to be sure our young servicemen and woman did not hesitate to go to war to protect America's national security interests. Each morning when our soldiers pull on their boots and head out into the streets of Iraq's cities, towns and villages, they are putting their lives at risk so that the Iraqi people and ultimately the people of the entire Middle East as well as the United States will have a secure, stable and prosperous future. Meanwhile, their families back home have made enormous personal and financial sacrifices.

For the families of many Reservists serving in Iraq, the kids had fewer back to school clothes this year because family income dropped precipitously. The parent left behind must struggle alone to make a living and raise a family. Despite these enormous sacrifices by our men and women in uniform and by their families, we have asked our nation's richest Americans to make no sacrifices whatsoever. On the contrary, this Congress granted them an enormous tax break. Some Americans sacrificed and served, others reaped a windfall.

For this reason, Mr. Chairman, I have joined Senator Joe Biden, our colleague and the senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in introducing legislation to reduce the tax breaks given to the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans. The money saved in one year could be used to pay for the $87 billion supplemental for our Armed Forces in Iraq and for Iraq's reconstruction. I urge all of my colleagues to join me in supporting this legislation.

In addition, Mr. Chairman, I have sent a letter to President Bush indicating that I will initiate an amendment to the supplemental appropriations bill to require that funding for the reconstruction portion of the supplemental, some $21 billion out of a total of $87 billion, be extended to the Iraqi people as a loan, not a grant. There is no doubt the reconstruction effort in Iraq, particularly regarding the infrastructure for the oil and gas industries, water and electricity, are matters of the greatest urgency. But these reconstruction costs will increase Iraq's economic resources so that they can and should repay those costs.

Iraq, Mr. Chairman, has the second largest reserve of oil in the world after Saudi Arabia. It is not a wealthy country now but it will be in coming years. Therefore, rather than providing our money gratis, it is imperative that the $20 billion for reconstruction be offered to Iraq as a long-term loan against future oil sales.

Iraq currently owes some $200 billion and its principal creditors are Russia, Japan, France and Germany. Most of the loans to Iraq, Mr. Chairman, were given to Saddam Hussein for weapons and for building of grand palaces. It sticks in my throat and it sticks in the throats of my constituents that we should provide $21 billion in grants to rebuild their infrastructure, while debts incurred for destructive and evil goals must be repaid in full.

Mr. Chairman, by funding all or part of Iraq's supplemental by reducing tax cuts for the rich and by pursuing loans, not grants to Iraq, I believe this important measure will enjoy must stronger bipartisan support, both in the Congress and in the country. I would urge the administration to carefully examine these proposals, and most importantly to understand that shared sacrifice is an absolute necessity in these times of great challenge.

I admire Ambassador Bremer's work. I have the greatest respect for him. He doesn't set tax policy and I'm not asking him to comment on my proposal, but I'm calling on the president and calling on our Republican colleagues to seriously consider these proposals. If we in the Congress move in the direction of recognizing that our reconstruction funding for Iraq should be a loan to be repaid from future Iraqi oil revenue, and if we see to it that the wealthiest Americans who have so far gotten just a windfall from this effort pay a cost -- pay a portion of the costs, the breadth of support for the supplemental will dramatically increase.

I had the proud privilege of managing on the Democratic side the war resolution. I am glad I did. I support your efforts, Ambassador Bremer, today, as I did before you were appointed to this post. But I think it is unreasonable to expect the American people to support this effort unless shared sacrifice at long last becomes the dominant theme of what we expect of the American people. Tax cuts for the wealthy and demanding service from our military are incompatible. Secondly, I see no reason why we should not expect Iraq, which will be a wealthy country, to repay the costs of building up its infrastructure. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

REP. HYDE: Thank you, Mr. Lantos, for very stimulating thoughts and ideas. Very interesting.

All members by unanimous consent may put their statements in the record by this point and we will proceed with our witness. We welcome the Honorable L. Paul Bremer III, who was appointed administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority in post-war Iraq by President Bush in May of this year. bassador Bremer is a man with enormous experience, as one of the world's leading experts on crisis management, terrorism and homeland security. He's served on the President's Homeland Security Advisory Council, also served as special assistant to six secretaries of State. In addition to numerous overseas assignments as ambassador and deputy chief of mission, he's served as executive secretary of the State Department and was President Reagan's ambassador-at-large for counterterrorism. I agree with every word Mr. Lantos said insofar as it was praising you and your good assistant Mr. -- I was going to say we've got to sequester everything there -- Mr. Coralogis. (ph) It's good to see him too. I especially admire his hair. (Laughter.) In any event, Ambassador Bremer, you may proceed.

AMBASSADOR L. PAUL BREMER III,
Administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority

MR. L. PAUL BREMER III: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I know you recognize that Mr. Coralogis had a nice head of brown hair when he came to serve me in Baghdad three months ago. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Lantos, thank you for this opportunity to appear before you on behalf of the president's request. Before I begin, I want to pay tribute to the men and women of our Armed Forces who won a magnificent victory, thanks to the support of many people here in this Congress. In three weeks they liberated a country bigger than Germany and Italy combined with an army smaller than that of the Army of the Potomac. It was really a magnificent operation.

Mr. Chairman, I will try to follow your example and skip through some parts of my statement but ask that the full statement be entered in the record. I know how unsettling it is for any member of Congress or any American to wake up to the news that another American has been killed in combat in Iraq. Since I'm eight hours ahead of you, I get that news before you, and nobody regrets it any more than I do. But these deaths, Mr. Chairman, are not the senseless deaths that they are sometimes portrayed as in the press. They are part of the price we pay for fighting for civilization and for fighting against terrorism.

Those who ambush the coalition and those who kill people like my friend Dr. Hashimi, who died overnight, they are trying to stop us from putting a constitutional, democratic and peaceful Iraq in place. And, Mr. Chairman, they may win a battle from time to time, but they're losing the war with history. They're on the wrong side of history.

President Bush has a clear vision for Iraq that has three components: an Iraq made more secure through the efforts of Iraqis, an Iraq with an economy based on sound economic principles and based on a coherent infrastructure, and an Iraq that is democratic and sovereign and at peace with its neighbors. If we fail to create that kind of Iraq, a sovereign democracy sustained by a solid economy, we will be handing terrorists a gift. We must deny terrorists the gift of state sponsorship, which they enjoyed for years, decades, under Saddam Hussein, and must deny them the chaos in countries such as they thrived on in Lebanon and subsequently in Afghanistan.

Creating a sovereign, democratic, constitutional and prosperous Iraq deals a blow to terrorists. That is why this request from the president has to be seen as an important element in the war on terrorism. Mr. Chairman, our national experience teaches us that it's not enough to win a military victory, we have to consolidate the victory by winning the peace.

It wasn't always so obvious to us. After the First World War we wanted to solve all our problems at home. We kicked the dust of the old world off our boots and we went home and we said, pay us back our debts. And we know what happened. The situation gave rise to chaos, tensions, fascism in Italy, Nazism in Germany, and a Second World War. The good news is we learned that lesson, and after the Second World War we showed that we knew you had to have a program to secure the peace after winning the military victory, and in 1948 America's greatest generation responded with the boldest, most generous, most productive act of statesmanship of the last century, the Marshall Plan.

The Marshall Plan was enacted, Mr. Chairman, by both houses of Congress with overwhelming bipartisan support. It set war-torn Europe on the path to freedom and prosperity, the freedom and prosperity which Europeans all over Europe, from the Atlantic to the Urals, enjoy today. After 1,000 years as the cockpit of war, Europe has become the cradle of peace in two short generations, a truly remarkable achievement of American statesmanship. The vision the president has for Iraq is of an equal grandeur, and it can, as Congressman Lantos said, establish a much safer region for us if we get it right. A stable, peaceful, economically productive Iraq serves American interests and makes America safer.

Let me make a few points about the plan and the supplemental that is before the Congress. We have a plan for how to execute this supplemental with milestones and metrics. But as you said, Mr. Chairman, we need to be flexible. We're in a very fast-moving situation in Iraq and my motto is strategic clarity and tactical flexibility. We have to be prepared to modify our plan as we go along. None of this is our mission, and as you said, we no doubt have made mistakes. We will make more mistakes but we'll be right more often than we're wrong.

Secondly, no one part of this supplemental is more important than another part. They complement each other, as I hope to explain in a minute. Thirdly, this is urgent. It's quite obvious to anybody who thinks about it that there is urgency involved in the military part of this supplemental, but it's also true on the economic assistance part. Most Iraqis welcomed us as liberators. Indeed, a Gallup poll that was just released yesterday shows that almost two-thirds of the Iraqis continue to say that getting rid of Saddam makes the sacrifices of the war and its aftermath worthwhile, and there has been a virtual explosion of freedom in Iraq since we arrived.

But even so, the reality of having foreign troops on your soil is not pleasant. And so we need to move quickly to try to show the population that we are also going to make their daily life better, get the economy going, and that is one of the purposes of this supplemental. Early progress here gives us an edge in restoring security.

The president's plan indeed puts its first priority on security in three areas: public safety, building of police, water police, facilities police. Secondly, national defense, moving much more quickly to establish a new Iraqi army and a civil defense corps. And thirdly, putting in place an effective, fair justice system with courts and prisons and lawyers. I think, Mr. Chairman, that this security assistance, part of the supplemental which totals about $5 billion, serves American interests very clearly in four specific ways.

First, Iraqis will be more effective as they take over more of their security than we can be. No matter how good our coalition forces are, nothing can be better than an Iraqi policeman on the beat who knows his neighbors, knows his people, knows their customs, their languages, their rhythms, and can find out who doesn't belong there and tell us. Iraqis want Iraqis involved in their security and so do we. Secondly, these Iraqi security forces will take over duties that sometimes cause friction between our forces and the population, conducting searches, manning checkpoints and so forth.

Thirdly, that frees up coalition forces to do the things they do best, the kind of mobile, sophisticated operations that are needed to fight terrorists and former regime loyalists. And finally, as these new Iraqi forces come on stream if the supplemental is approved, it will reduce the overall security demand on coalition forces and allow us to bring our men and women home sooner.

But a good security system cannot exist on the knife edge of economic collapse. It's not enough. Saddam left behind an economy that was ruined not by our attacks but by decades of neglect, theft and mismanagement. The Iraqis must refashion their economy from the Soviet-style command economy Saddam left them. Important changes have already begun. Mr. Chairman, you may have read last weekend that the new Iraqi minister of finance in Dubai announced the approval of the most sweeping foreign domestic law -- foreign investment law in the region, allowing 100 percent foreign investment in the country and all you have to do is register. Complete immediate repatriation of profit and capital. Foreign firms including banks now can come in and compete.

They also introduced a very simple tariff policy. There's a 5 percent reconstruction tariff across the board, except for children's clothing and food and pharmaceuticals. This will help refinance some of the reconstruction.

Mr. Chairman, what's happened here is the Iraqi government has put in place the legal infrastructure necessary for economic growth, for the creation of a vibrant private sector. We need to be sure that there is in place the infrastructure, the essential services so that this vibrant private sector can take off. And that's where most of the remaining $15 billion is applied to these essential services and the infrastructure.

In the area of the president's vision for a democratic Iraq there is good news. First of all, some 85 percent of all Iraqi towns and cities now have elected town councils or city councils. Democracy is on the move in Iraq and it's on the move where it needs to be on the move, at the grassroots level. We have encouraged a quick political transformation and have laid out a clear seven step path to Iraqi sovereignty. Under international law we exercise sovereignty until there is a sovereign Iraqi government. Three of the seven steps towards the time when we can hand over sovereignty have already been taken. We hope the next four can be taken quickly in the period ahead. Certainly nobody wants that to move more quickly than we do.

But the path to full Iraqi sovereignty cannot be strewn with shortcuts. There are no shortcuts to putting in place the requisite structures, particularly the constitutional and legal structures. We, after all, are a country which took 12 years to get our Constitution right. This is a country with no experience in democracy or representative government, and we have to let them get a good written constitution and hold elections on the basis of that constitution before we can hand over sovereignty. There is no shortcut.

As you look over the president's plan, I think you will see that every part depends on the other parts. The need to protect the coalition and populous alike against terrorists and criminals is obvious. The United States must take the lead now in showing the world if we want a free and democratic Iraq there's a donors' conference, an international donors' conference coming up in Madrid at the end of October and we need to set the examples for other nations of the world by showing what we are prepared to do.

When we launched military operations against Iraq, Mr. Chairman, we assumed a great responsibility that extends beyond defeating Saddam's military, just as when we defeated Nazi Germany or Tojo's Japan we assumed a great responsibility for their recovery.

And make no mistake, these requested funds represent an investment in America's national security, and when in the decades hence the historians look back, they will say that the American people have once again learned the lesson that it's not enough to have a military victory, you have to secure the peace. Thank you.

REP. JAMES A. LEACH (R-IA): Ambassador, we had some discussions earlier in the day that indicated that there are some administration reports that preplanning for the post-war circumstances may have been inadequate. I personally suspect that's very much the case. But having said that, I want to indicate something that I think this committee and this country ought to be very aware of, and that is whether or not we understood exactly what we were getting into or planned perfectly for that circumstance. There is not only great courage of American troops, but the American civilians serving in Iraq have to be the most heroic public servants in America today.

And I know of no two people who are more targets on a daily basis than you and the gentleman behind you. And on behalf of this committee I want to make a very partisan observation, and that is Ambassador Bremer is considered one of the great professional diplomats of our time. Walt Slocombe, who's his deputy, is, I believe, unquestionably the most competent Democrat in the United States and we're in your debt.

And I might even go further in saying, Walt, you may be the most competent American public official, and so we're honored that you have chosen to serve. This is a very dangerous assignment and this committee has to be very appreciative and the American public has to be very appreciative. Having said that, one of the things that we struggle with as we look at the news is that there is a circumstance that Americans don't think about because we take it for granted that many other societies think a great deal about, and it's the issue of legitimacy. How is a government made legitimate? The American political system is based on consent of the govern. That's where we derive our legitimacy.

When there's intervention in warfare, there's the power of the outside power. But we have an imperfect international mantle. And the case for internationalization of certain civilian leadership is very high until sovereignty is achieved. And whether it's fair to America or not, the fact of the matter is the rest of the world doesn't want to share in a circumstance in which they don't play a role.

We struggled a lot with the question as a Congress and as a government and as a people, with the role of the United Nations and the war making function. There is a separable issue with regard to the peacemaking process, and I personally believe the case for bringing in outside people is going to involve a certain reduction in our role on the civilian side, and there's an unfairness in some way in that because I can't visualize anyone more competent than the two of you.

On the other hand, from a legitimacy perspective, I can't think of anything more important. And I stress this because, as we look through the future, the United States and the world today is increasingly isolated. I have recently returned form the Far East. It's just so clear it's hard to believe. And the Muslim world, which I haven't visited, but the reports are very profound.

And I'm personally convinced that an isolated America would well become an isolationist America. And my message to my friends -- and I'm one that has not been convinced that the intervention was the right way to go. On the other hand, failure will be awesomely awful for the world. And the rest of the world really should give America the benefit of the doubt in coming through and helping us in these very difficult times, whether they agree with our intervention or not. And if they don't, the world is going to be a much lesser place and some of that lesser-ness may be led by America if we react in ways that could conceivably be the case.

And so the question I have for you is, as you look to the future, how do you see a transition to self-governance and where do you see the role of the international community in that transition process?

MR. BREMER: Thank you, Congressman, for that very thoughtful point. And I think there's a lot that needs to be thought through about this question of legitimacy. It's a subject, after all, in which Americans have been thinking and talking and debating for more than 225 years. I agree and I believe with you that an isolationist America would be extremely dangerous not just for the world but for the United States.

I have spent 40 years in international affairs so my life is dedicated to that proposition. I believe that there is an important role for the United Nations and for the international community in Iraq. I think it's sometimes not well understood how much is already there. We have 30 other countries providing troops on the ground beside our men and women. I have the citizens of 15 other countries on my staff at the coalition provisional authority.

We have -- already had pledges from 61 countries to contribute to the reconstruction of Iraq. So there is already a broad arrangement. I certainly believe the United Nations can help us in the future. I worked very closely with Sergio de Mello before he was killed by terrorists and I think we can find ways as we go forward to work closely with the United Nations, as the president suggested in his speech on Tuesday.

I want to identify myself with Mr. Leach's comments about both you, Ambassador Bremer, and Walt Slocombe. I'm deeply in the debt of both of you and indeed, all the American civilians or military who are there and as well as our coalition partners. I will not ask you obviously, Ambassador Bremer, to deal with the point I raised, the unfair allocation of sacrifice. This is tax policy and that is not your job. But I do wish to ask you with respect to my second proposal, namely, the turning of the reconstruction portion of the supplemental into a loan rather than a grant.

And let me first comment on your analogy with the Marshall Plan. I'm one of the few people in the room, along with the chairman, who was very much present at the time of the Marshall Plan. As a matter of fact, as a student in Budapest at the time I called for Hungary's joining the Marshall Plan, which did not make me very popular and partially explains why I'm serving in this body.

The Marshall Plan was one of the greatest achievements of modern times. But it was aimed at a continent, and I traveled that continent widely at the time, which was totally devastated. One city after another looked like Hiroshima or something close to it. And it was only natural that we would proceed with a grant, although we anticipated matching funds from the Europeans and they were forthcoming.

Our Marshall Plan for Afghanistan today is a very reasonable proposition. Afghanistan is a poor country. Iraq is a potentially unbelievably wealthy country. The second largest oil reserves on the face of this planet. And it simply makes no sense to a rational person in this country why the American taxpayer should be asked to build Iraq's infrastructure which is in the shape it is in not because of the war but because of the deliberate neglect by the Saddam Hussein regime that you have pointed out so often and so eloquently. From your own point of view, Ambassador Bremer, would it make any difference if the Congress were to grant the reconstruction portion of the supplemental in the form of a loan to be repaid over the long run from oil revenues at a time when oil revenues will be flowing in great abundance to an Iraqi government?

MR. BREMER: Congressman, I think there are -- this is a perfectly understandable issue that I've had other members of this House and the other body raise of me. The problem that I see is the following: Iraq has about $200 billion in debt and reparations. You cited the countries who are the main creditors on the debt side. They obviously can't afford to pay that. And the situation is that that payment -- debt service on that has been told until the end of 2004 by agreement of the G7. There will be no payments, to give us a year and a half to essentially find a way to renegotiate substantial reductions in those debts.

REP. LANTOS: Well, some of us say their debt's forgiven because it's an outrage that the French should be expecting the Iraqis to pay for Saddam Hussein's purchase of weaponry.

MR. BREMER: I agree, and there's an even greater perhaps irony of the Iraqi people, the people in this government, who thought Saddam Hussein having to pay reparations to much wealthier neighbors for a war of aggression that Saddam fought. Both elements are clearly, from many reasonable point of views, susceptible to significant change. Whether it's forgiveness or reduction is a matter for bankers and lawyers.

But it is clear that no matter how you slice it, while that debt hangs over Iraq it certainly cannot service that debt. It doesn't have the money to service it and it won't, for many, many years to come. The numbers are just too big. If you took just the debt, the government debt, which is put at about $124 billion and assume 6 percent interest rate, the annual debt service alone is going to run you $7.5 billion, which they don't have. Next year if we're lucky we'll have about $13 billion in total revenues against expenditures of about $14 billion.

Now -- so I think we have to find a way to substantially reduce the debt. I am sympathetic to the concept that not a penny of the supplemental should ever go to repaying any of that debt. That, it seems to me, is the most odious outcome you can imagine, that the American taxpayer puts tax dollars in and they go to repaying the debt. And I would be very sympathetic to finding some way to make that clear.

REP. LANTOS: Well, could I just rephrase my last question. From your point of view, as the person responsible for reconstruction, would it make any difference if the Congress were to choose to provide the $21 billion dollars in the form of a long-term loan to be repaid at a time when Iraqi oil revenues are sufficient for the governmental purposes of the country, for further reconstruction, for enhancing the capabilities of their oil resources so their future revenues will be yet fair. Does it really make any difference to your allocating contract for electricity or oil pipeline purposes or whatever if these funds are made available by us in the form of a loan? Is there the slightest difference from your point of view?

MR. BREMER: I think the differences are two, and they are political rather than contractual. The first problem is that, in effect, we then have to get some political entity which doesn't actually exist now that can actually enter into a loan, as a legal matter. We are the authority in Iraq. There is no constituted authority that could sign such debt. And second problem is I think we'd be subject to the interpretation that we went into Iraq, after all, to get our hands on the oil revenues, even if you could argue it's a loan, it's a lean against the revenues. So there are some political problems with that. It's not a contractual problem. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Bremer, welcome, and thank you for your testimony and for the job that you and your compatriots do and the way you perform it. You mentioned, I believe, the decade -- the conditions of services and infrastructure in part relate to the decades of theft and neglect and mismanagement and I certainly agree. I think that's a major part of it. And I would also go on to say the prejudicial and discriminatory fashion which the oil revenue resources post 1991 were allocated.

It's my understanding that the damage to the infrastructure in the recent conflict was relatively minor, at least compared to the usual conflict. And we took great pains to avoid damaging critical infrastructure whenever possible. Now, my question are two: one, are we attempting to restore services and infrastructure to the 1990 level before the Gulf War, the 1991 level post-Gulf War or January 2003? I raise that question because I think it's important we limit our resources to war damage. There was never 100 percent of the population served by portable water. Never 100 percent served by adequate telecommunication service. Never adequate service and health areas for 100 percent of population. In fact, far from it.

And so that's the first question. The second one is just a request that you respond to here and in the course of your important duties. I do not want to read in the future after our effort is completed in the interim that there have been outrageous profit levels, that the bidding processes, certainly not to the level we expect in the United States because you have to move rapidly, that those profit levels are not huge, that we are not designing and constructing things to U.S. labor pay and standards. I want your assurance that you're going to watch and see that we don't have those outrageous, egregious examples given to us in the future. I expect you to move expeditiously and not take our normal bidding or procurement processes but I want some assurance that this is going to be high priority for you, Mr. Ambassador.

MR. BREMER: Yes, let me just answer the second question first. In fact, we are going to follow American bidding processes as we're required to by law with appropriated funds. We have already substantially beefed up both our contracting and auditing offices in Baghdad in anticipation that we will be letting these contracts. We will, obviously wherever possible -- we're not going to build to world standards except in places like telecommunications where, in effect, you might as well put in fiber optics if that's what you're going to have, and you might as well do it right.

But we will be prudent. I'm a taxpayer. I'm not anxious to see my tax dollars wasted either. So you certainly have my assurance on that point. And we will have to move quickly sometimes but our intention is to use full and open competitive bidding for all of the contracts under the $20 billion. I do not anticipate having to use a national security exception. I hope I don't have to.

As for what we're trying to do, what are the metrics, where are we trying to -- it varies from place to place. In an area like telecommunications where there was substantial damage, it's the only area really where our war -- this war did substantial damage. It doesn't make very much sense to simply take them back to 1990 or 1991 pre-Internet. You might as well, as I said, give them modern telecommunications, and that's what's in here.

Now, in areas like electricity what we're trying to do is get them back in -- more or less, at least the generating capabilities that they had in the early 90s. The power situation is probably the most complicated of all. The current generating capability maximum is about 4,400 megawatts and the demand is about 6000. 4,400 is what they generated before the war. We're not going to be satisfied with just going back to the pre-war level because you're leaving them then with eight hours a day with no power. If you average it out it's a third below demand.

I don't believe you can have a stable economy leading to a stable democratic governance if you simply say to the people, sorry, you're going to be without power eight hours eight hours a day. So we're trying to get back, in the course of the next eight months or so, to the 6000 megawatts demand level and we anticipate demand will obviously grow from there. So you have to go case by case as you go through this. There is $400 million in here for maximum security prisons.

All 151 prisons in Iraq were destroyed by essentially revenge actions and then looting after the war. We have 100,000 prisoners let loose by Saddam Hussein. We have to have places to put them, including maximum security prisons. So we have to build new prisons. We can't just go back to what he had. Certainly we don't want to go back to the kind of prisons he used. It varies -- what I'm trying to say, area by area.

REP. BEREUTER: It's a question my constituents had, others have. I appreciate your answer. I think it's very responsible and reasoned.

REP. ROBERT MENENDEZ (D-NJ): Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ambassador Bremer. My questions obviously aren't the ones that are part of this package for the purposes of our troops, which we generally support, obviously. And certainly those of us who are chagrined that 40,000 of them have no flak jackets or that we don't -- are concerned about force protection or those who come back injured and get hospital bills. Those are real concerns that we need to be addressing, especially if we want to build up the Reserves.

But moving to that area that is your responsibility, I -- and henceforth my time is limited and I hope you'll work we me on some of these questions that are simpler to answer.

Did you have a plan given to you by this administration with reference to reconstruction when you took over this particular assignment? Can you answer that yes or no?

REP. MENENDEZ: And is that the plan that you now have given to the Congress that is entitled "Achieving the vision to restore full sovereignty to the Iraqi people"?

MR. BREMER: No. We are two or three iterations past the plan that I inherited. And that plan that you're looking at there, which I think is dated July, is already two months out of date.

MR. BREMER: Well, here's -- let me tell you what the process is. We review that plan on a quarterly basis --

MR. BREMER: Well, I don't -- I can't answer when you're voting, Congressman, I can just tell you when I can present the plan.

REP. MENENDEZ: Well, if we vote within the next two weeks will that plan be available for the congressmen here?

MR. BREMER: Yes, we will finish this first quarter review of our plan next week, September 30.

REP. MENENDEZ: So the plan that's been reported in the Washington Times that the Joint Chiefs of Staff had referred to as Phase IV. That's not the plan that, in fact, is even being pursued today.

MR. BREMER: That is a military plan, and one of the things we are doing is putting --

MR. BREMER: Right. That's correct. That is a JCS plan, CENTCOM plan. And what we are doing now is we are marrying their plan with our civilian reconstruction plan. Putting the two of them together.

REP. MENENDEZ: So you were privy to that plan? That plan is referring to Phase IV?

REP. MENENDEZ: Were you using that phase for a plan that everybody says is not final?

MR. BREMER: No. I'm not using it. I'm sorry, I didn't make myself clear. The Phase IV plan is a plan for the military component of our activities in Iraq. I am not responsible for the military component of our activities in Iraq.

REP. MENENDEZ: Well, Phase IV here says reconstruction. Let me ask you this: how many -- well, first of all, you say in achieving the vision which you say is now stale, but I assume that this vision is still the same --

REP. MENENDEZ: The goal of the Coalition Provisional Authority is the following: "A unified and stable democratic Iraq that provides effective and representative government for the Iraqi people is underpinned by new and protected freedoms and a growing market economy is able to defend itself or no longer possess a threat to its neighbors or international security."

How long do you project that that goal of the Coalition Provisional Authority is going to take, number one? And number two is how many more billion dollars in addition to the present request are U.S. taxpayers going to be asked to spend in Iraq?

MR. BREMER: Well, it's hard to say how long it'll take. We have benchmarks going out over the next year and, now that the supplemental has been put together, over the next 18 to 24 months some of the things in the supplemental will take 18 months, some will take 24 months.

MR. BREMER: Yes. I think the longest lead items in the supplemental will take about two years, to actually have a power plant built or a dam repaired or whatever.

REP. MENENDEZ: But our engagement will be at least two years. Could it be as long as five?

MR. BREMER: Well, I think the coalition authority, in fact -- there are three different questions. When does the coalition authority pass sovereignty back to the Iraqi government and the Iraqi government becomes responsible for that kind of an Iraq? The answer is a soon as the Iraqis can write a constitution and hold democratic elections. The coalition authority goes out of business. I no longer have job. And that's my job.

MR. BREMER: We don't anticipate any other supplemental requests. This is the supplemental request. Any future --

REP. MENENDEZ: The total reconstruction course for Iraq will be $21 billion, beyond the military component? That is the total reconstruction -- you will not come to this Congress and ask for any more money beyond the $21 billion you're asking for in this supplement?

MR. BREMER: What I said was we do not anticipate coming back with another supplemental request. Any additional funds needed for Iraq's reconstruction from the American side would come in the regular appropriations process.

MR. BREMER: I really don't know at this point, because here are the unknowns. We are going to have a donor's conference at the end of October. The total amount that the World Bank estimates is needed is somewhere between $60 billion and $70 billion over a five-year period. What we have done in this supplemental is say, what do we need quickly and urgently to succeed in the next 12 to 18 months? That's what this is. This is urgent priority essential stuff that we think represents the American share of that $60 billion to $70 billion. The Iraqis will put up some money because in two years, they will start to generate enough oil revenue to be accessed through their operating expenses.

We hope the international donors and the international financial institutions will come up with money at the Madrid conference.

And the Iraqis have to put together a budget for 2005 which they have not yet done. Once those pieces are in place, then the administration will have an ability to come up to you for the FY '05 regular appropriations and authorization process. That's where any additional funds would come. But I do not anticipate anything on this order of magnitude.

REP. DAN BURTON (R-IN): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am certainly going to support my president and support you in the request that you're making. However, I do have some concerns. Iraq is $200 billion in debt and you made a comment a moment ago that forgiving any of that debt or cutting back on the amount of debt is something for bankers and lawyers. I think that's something that should be in the negotiation process over the next couple of years, maybe on your watch and I think that there's a lot of members of Congress who are going to be very, very concerned about appropriating the kind of money that's needed while at the same time France and Germany and other countries are getting repaid in full for things that they've sold to Saddam Hussein when the world was kind of frowning on that. So I think that's one of the things most members of Congress would agree with.

Regarding the $21.4 billion being a loan instead of a grant, I don't see anything wrong with that. I think Mr. Lantos and I would agree on that. We could make that an interest-free loan to be paid over a long period of time. That would sit very well with the American people. I think it would sit very well with the Congress. The money would still go. It would be sent over there for the reconstruction but the American people would expect repayment at some point in the future and it could be over a 10, 15, 20-year period. And I notice you were talking about the cost of servicing the debt, make it a no interest loan. At least we're going to get the $21 billion back.

One of the things that -- and also if you or somebody else in the administration has to come back later and ask for more money for the rebuilding of Iraq, it would make it a lot easier to ask for that in a supplemental or in a future appropriation bill if we knew that this $21 billion was a loan rather than a grant. And finally, one of the things that concerns me and concerned a lot of my colleagues, I think -- Jim Traficant when he was here was always talking about it, Buy American. Everything that was purchased by our government, he always had a Buy American clause in it.

If we're going to be spending this kind of money in Iraq, you as the administrator over there, I hope, will do everything you can to make sure that American companies, American producers get the lion's share of the business. It's not to say that you shouldn't buy from other countries and other parts of the world. But since we're putting out the money, I would hope American entrepreneurs would get the benefit of that.

MR. BREMER: Congressman, absolutely. On the last point, let me just be clear on the debt point. I may have misled you or misspoken. I completely agree, I thought I made it clear, that this is odious that this debt either whether it's the creditors that Saddam incurred or the, in particular, reparations from his wars of aggressions. This is odious and it should be substantially reduced. I didn't mean to say that it shouldn't -- that the debt negotiations shouldn't start. They are really already started from the Evian meeting on June 6th this year when the G7 said we're not going to have any payment on that debt for a year and-a-half. But we're going to start the process now of taking an inventory of the debt and figuring out how to get a quick reduction. I'm absolutely in favor of that.

My point about the bankers and lawyers was how the mechanism of how that is then done is a technical matter. I'm not competent to comment on --

MR. BREMER: But I'm absolutely with you on that point and I'm absolutely prepared to have Congress say not a penny of the supplemental, of American taxpayers' money should go to repaying their debt. It's clear. On the loan question, it's an issue that I think needs further discussion.

REP. SHERROD BROWN (D-OH): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.bassador, welcome and thank you for joining us. Last night, I received a call about 8:00 from a Marine sergeant from my home town whom I had met when he returned from Iraq injured. He spent four months in the hospital in Bethesda. He told me, calling me from Camp Lejeune as he is being rehabilitated now out of the hospital, he owes $500 for his meals to the federal government.

We all get letters from servicemen's and women's families, sometimes from servicemen and women themselves, about the paucity of flap jackets, toilet paper, sanitary napkins, all kinds of things that our troops deserve and need. And I know the responsibilities are split between you and the Pentagon but can you, with this $87 billion that you probably will get from this Congress, can you give these parents and relatives specific steps that will be taken that these troops will, most importantly, have their safety more assured than it has been and their supplies and needs taken care of better than they have been?

MR. BREMER: Congressman, I understand and sympathize with these points. It really is not my responsibility. But by coincidence, the same question was asked of General Abizaid in the hearing. Part of it, I can answer, which is the flap jackets are on order and will be available to all servicemen and women, I think he said, by November. On the other issues of paying for meals, that apparently is a legal requirement which the House Armed Services Committee, if I understood the chairman there, is undertaking to see if they can find some way around it. But frankly, I'm pretty well outside my lane here, as they say in the Pentagon. These are good questions. I suggest you ask them of the chiefs.

MR. BREMER: The answer is they are taking care of them in the supplemental but that's as far as I can go.

REP. BROWN: I appreciate that. I'm incredulous that it's going to be November till we have flap jackets when this is something that as much else should have been done should have been planned for. We all appreciate your vision of a democratic Iraq. We're skeptical -- at least some of us are -- about the performance of our government, the Pentagon, the civil authority, since the president declared the war over and especially we're skeptical when we see us spending almost a billion dollars a week.

We see as much as a third of that go to private contractors, some of it -- much of it unbid, much of it going to Bechtel, to Haliburton where the vice president still is receiving $14,000 a month. It seems most of these unbid contracts, much of this money to private contractors has gone to many of the president's friends and contributors and these private contractors don't seem to be doing the job that they ought to be doing in supplying all kinds of things to our servicemen and women, some of the items I was mentioning earlier. There seems to be no accountability for the first $60 some billion a week.

How do I explain -- forget about explaining it to Congress -- how do I explain to taxpayers in my district? How do I especially explain to those families who have made the largest -- in some cases, the ultimate sacrifice, in other cases, the large sacrifice of sending their men and women and sons and daughters and husbands and wives to Iraq? How do we explain that to them if you're not willing to tell us and tell the American people more about where these unbid contracts are going and assure us that Haliburton -- assure us that the vice president's company where he is still receiving an income three times the average income of the American people annually that there is not something -- it may be a little shaky there.

MR. BREMER: Congressman, again, most of these questions belong with the Pentagon comptroller. Let me clear a couple -- I think the important place to start in answering your constituents' questions is let's get the facts straight. My understanding is that 95 percent of the contracts that have been let since we've been there have been open, full and fair bidding.

That, incidentally, also includes the Bechtel contract, which, contrary to constant press reports, was in fact competitively bid. The Haliburton contract, as I understand it -- and it was let long before I got on the scene, I was a happy businessman at that time -- was not competitively bid and it is to restore the oilfields. I don't know what the relationship is between the Haliburton contract and service to our servicemen. I don't think there is any. That contract is being re-bid now and will be re-bid, as I understand it, I think, it's November.

REP. BROWN: It was originally supposed to be re-bid in August is my recollection.

MR. BREMER: I'm told it's being re-bid October 1st. Anyway, I think it's important to get -- first step for answering your constituent questions is to get the baseline facts correct, and the people that ask about that are the controller at the Pentagon.

REP. EDWARD R. ROYCE (R-CA): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.bassador Bremer, good to see you again. And I wanted to ask you a question about a committee hearing we held last week in this very chamber. And we heard from a senior administration official who said that Syria permitted volunteers to pass into Iraq to attack and kill our service members during the war, and then he went on to say that Syria is still doing so. And I also wanted to ask you about a U.S. News & World report that said that on telephone intercepts of Saudi fighters calling home, they were saying that they were in Iraq preparing for action. So you were on the ground there and I had an opportunity to talk with you in May in Baghdad, but my question is can you comment on these current reports about militants coming into Iraq to wage Jihad?

MR. BREMER: Yes. I'm looking for the numbers we've captured here so I can give you some more precision. But we have several hundred effectively third country nationals in detention now, we've killed many more. The single largest group that we have in captivity are Syrians and we have quite a number of Saudis as well. We are concerned about this. Some of these fighters we think came in before the war. You may recall some of the neighboring countries like Syria sent volunteers.

Here it is. The number of third country national detainees we have now is 278, of which 123 are from Syria. And we believe that there are ratlines, as they call them, from Syria into Iraq, where both fighters and in many cases terrorists are still coming in. We think the Syrians should be doing a much better job of controlling their border than they are.

REP. ROYCE: And the trend is on the upswing and we don't see at this time concerted action on the part of the Syrian government to really control the situation?

MR. BREMER: We've had discussions with the Syrian government, not me but our government has had discussions, and we do not yet see the kind of full cooperation we'd like to see controlling their borders.

REP. ROYCE: Can you share with me some of the things that you're seeing on a daily basis? We saw the poll the other day that showed that two-thirds of Iraqis say that this was well worth it, that their expectation is that they're going to get a democratic system out of this. It was worth the removal of Saddam -- the removal of Saddam Hussein's been worth the hardships, as they say. But some of my constituents say we don't get that feel as we hear the broadcast from the media. We don't get that feeling about where those two-thirds of the people are in Iraq. Could you give us some insights on what you're seeing on a daily basis?

MR. BREMER: Well, one of the most difficult and frustrating parts of the job is just what you put your finger on here, Congressman. There is an impression conveyed by many of the reports based in Iraq the country is in chaos because they only report on the bad news. The fact of the matter is, and it's much more true today than it was when you were there in May, Iraq is a country at peace. The north is quiet. The areas south of Baghdad, which is almost 50 percent of the population and about 50 percent of the land mass, is quiet. We have a security problem in the area from Baghdad west to Ar Ramadi and north to Tikrit, and we've had that problem. That's where 85 to 90 percent of the attacks against the coalition take place. We have a problem there and we're dealing with it.

It's very frustrating because we have now successfully concluded over 8,000 reconstruction projects all over Iraq. And every one -- I won't say every one of those is a great news story, but a lot of them are really good news stories. Orphanages being rebuilt by our soldiers, schools being repainted, doors being put on hospitals, generators being put on hospitals, factories being reopened, schoolyards being cleaned up so kids can play soccer, community centers being built. The list goes on and on. There are 8,000 of them and counting. And there are a lot of good news stories. My frustration is I have a hard time getting the press to write the good news stories. This will not surprise members of the political class I don't suspect, but it's a very great frustration to me.

REP. ROYCE: I was surprised in Kirkuk we watched soccer games, more than one. In Baghdad we saw all the shops were open. At one point there was rush hour traffic. So I think the other issue I guess I'd ask you about is the Iraqi governing council is arguing that they should be given power very soon. I think that's a good thing because it seems democracy is alive and well in Iraq in that sense. But at the same time, why is it not a plausible idea to turn over authority let's say this week. Why is that not a plausible idea? And what is your timeline for further empowering that council?

MR. BREMER: Well, I will be brief. It's not plausible because it would not make sense to turn over sovereignty to a body, even though it's an honest and competent body like the governing council, which has no political legitimacy. They were, after all, appointed. We, above all people, who have spent 225 years thinking about legitimacy, thinking about this question of how you get the consent of people, have to insist that there must be a constitutional framework around which Iraq's political structure is built.

MR. BREMER: And that is where we come to my steps. I don't have a timeline but I have laid out a path. Seven steps on the path, we've taken three, there are four to go.

I too want to welcome you, Ambassador Bremer. I'm sure you're familiar with the internal Pentagon report prepared for the joint chiefs of staff, entitled "Operation Iraqi Freedom Lessons Learned." Have you been given a copy of that report?

REP. WEXLER: Could you -- you have a copy of the report? I'm not trying to trick you.

MR. BREMER: I was given a briefing. I don't know -- I was given a briefing with a deck of slides. I don't know whether that's the report or just a deck of slides. That's why I said I was briefed on it.

REP. WEXLER: Okay. According to some press reports, this appears to be at this point what may be the definitive administration self-analysis of the post-war planning and operation.

Can you share with us some of the things we should know from that report as we are debating the $87 billion request, some of the lessons learned?

MR. BREMER: Congressman, as I recall, and I was briefed on it several days ago, it's a classified report so I'm afraid I can't share that with you. If I could remember all the lessons learned, which I can't.

REP. WEXLER: That's fair. Do you think there's any information in that report --

REP. WEXLER: Do you think there's any information in that report that might be relevant to Congress's deliberations regarding the $87 billion appropriation request.

MR. BREMER: It's a good question and a fair one, Congressman, not that I remember. It was largely related to the kinetic part of the operations and how -- in other words, it was largely dedicated to the lessons learned on the military side.

REP. WEXLER: Our colleague, Congressman Paul, in an earlier hearing we had, raised the question of how many Iraqis have been killed during the military action. I was wondering if you could share with us in terms of civilians and soldiers how many Iraqis have been killed during the military action and how many have died since President Bush declared the military operation over.

MR. BREMER: Well, if anybody would have it, you would have to address it to the military side of the Pentagon.

REP. WEXLER: So you've never been briefed on the number of Iraqis that have been killed?

MR. BREMER: Well, it's not at the moment relevant to what I'm trying to do, which is to rebuild the country.

REP. WEXLER: So whether there were 10 Iraqis killed or 400,000 would not be relevant to our programs in Iraq now?

REP. WEXLER: Good. I'm glad to hear that. Why doesn't the GAO have access to conduct audits of the money being spent in Iraq yet?

MR. BREMER: In fact, they had people over there. They may still be there. They are still there.

MR. BREMER: I'm sorry. I'm told they've returned from Baghdad, but they came at my invitation. They were there for a couple of months. So I don't know what the problem is.

REP. WEXLER: A draft report apparently regarding Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, newspaper report, suggests -- will show that our inspector will report nothing yet found. In May, President Bush stated that the discovery of a group of mysterious trailers were used to manufacture biological weapons. Do you agree with the president's assertion?

REP. WEXLER: Vice President Cheney called the trailers mobile biological facilities. Do you think the vice president was on target?

MR. BREMER: I don't know. I've seen the trailers but I'm not an expert, so I cannot give you a considered judgment. I suspect we wait until we see what Dr. Kay says. He's the expert.

REP. WEXLER: We haven't got the report yet and we're trying to determine what the status is, but you can't help us I guess.

MR. BREMER: Dr. Kay works for the director of Central Intelligence, and when he has his report ready, I'm sure he'll make it available to the appropriate members of Congress.

Welcome, Ambassador. I want to start off by just saying that in the study of free market economics there is a general rule that says that if you try to correct a problem and you intervene, you generally create two new problems. And that's one of the reasons why we have a huge federal register. I believe that same principle applies in foreign policy as well. Sometimes when we do things with the best of intentions, we get results that weren't intended. And I think that's what we're dealing with today, because obviously it wasn't planned for and even us who strongly objected to the war, we didn't know exactly what would happen. I could have been concluded in a month or a year or whatever. So we're dealing with unintended consequences.

And I think that's very important because I think that's more likely the rule than the exception. And for those individuals that indicate that those of us who don't believe in entangling alliances, getting involved in the internal affairs of other nations, which we were so strongly advised many years ago, and that we shouldn't be involved in nation building and that policing the world isn't a good idea. Generally we are dismissed as saying, well, they're isolationists and therefore they're bad people. But, you know, there is a different definition for isolationism, and that doesn't necessarily mean that a persons an isolationist, because as long as the country is willing to allow goods and people and services cross borders, you don't become a true isolationist.

But in dealing with why we're facing these problems, New York Times last week had an article, and this is a quote from it. It says, "New intelligence assessments are warning that the United States' most formidable foe in Iraq in the months ahead may be the resentment of ordinary Iraqis increasingly hostile to the American military occupation.

" And that seems to be challenged a little bit in what you're saying, and of course I'm sure there are foreign elements coming, another unintended consequence. I'm sure there are still Saddam Hussein supporters there which should have been anticipated.

But General Sanchez said something too that makes me think that the number of those killed is very relevant. And he said, "We have seen that when we have an incident in the conduct of our operations when we killed an innocent civilian, based on their ethic, their values, their culture, they would seek revenge." Close quote. And I think that could apply to occupation as well. So I think the numbers are very, very important, because I have read where there could be as many as 50,000 civilians killed. That means 50,000 families and hundreds of thousands of friends and relatives.

So we have created a problem for ourselves because of that, but to say it's unimportant or not recognized, maybe the New York Times and maybe General Sanchez is correct here that we are dealing with ordinary Iraqis. I keep thinking of the analogy of what would we as Americans think if the Chinese decided that they had to protect their oil and they occupied the Gulf of Mexico like we occupy the Persian Gulf? What would we in Texas think if we had an airbase on our holy land in Texas? There would be a lot of resentment.

And these are the kind of things I think we seem to fail to understand and maybe why you have a difficult job, raising the question as to how long are we going to be there? Are more specifically -- I wouldn't mind you commenting on what I've said, but more specifically, could there possibly be an endpoint in your mind? What if we're there in Iraq and in five years we've lost 5,000 men and we've spent over $1 trillion and we still have chaos over there? Would you be willing then to say, well, you know, we've got to reassess whether or not we should even be there.

MR. BREMER: Well, Congressman, it's a hypothetical question and it seems so completely unlikely that I don't think we're going to spend anything like $1 trillion there. Let me talk about the resentment question. What General Sanchez was talking about I agree, which is that we have on occasion, particularly in the operations we've been conducting in the last there months, two and a half months, inadvertently killed innocent Iraqis. And where that has happened and we can identify that it's happened, we have done what is culturally correct. We have essentially paid the relatives. And that has had a great calming effect.

But the fact of the matter is the people who are attacking and killing our soldiers are not simply angry Iraqis. They are trained killers. They are members of the Fedayeen Saddam, they are trained killers from Saddam's former intelligence services. Those are the people who are out in squad level operations, killing our soldiers. And if you look at the polls, including a poll that was referred to earlier today, you will see that in fact the majority of Iraqis are still appreciative of our being there. That's not to say that being occupied is easy. It's not. And being an occupying power is not easy. But our problem is the people who are killing us are terrorists and these former regime loyalists, and those are the people we've got to hunt down and either kill or capture before they kill us.

REP. WILLIAM D. DELAHUNT (D-MA): Yes, thank you.bassador, let me also acknowledge the courage and the commitment that you and those that are in Iraq are making. I want to get back to the issue of the debt pre the war. We hear stuff about Germany and France, et cetera. There's also a debt owed to the American people. From 1982 to 1990, shortly before the first Gulf War, both the Reagan and the Bush administration supported Saddam Hussein. You're aware of that I'm sure.

REP. DELAHUNT: We provided loan guarantees, we provided agricultural credits, we did much to support that regime. In fact, we continued to support that regime after the end of the Iran-Iraq War. Now, it's my understanding that there have been numerous defaults on those loans that the Reagan/Bush administrations made to Saddam -- to the Saddam regime. Do you know what the number, the aggregate number of those loans are, and how much is owed the American people?

MR. BREMER: My understanding, Congressman, is that the capital amount owed is about $2 billion and the accrued, unpaid interest is another $2 billion.

REP. DELAHUNT: Well, let me suggest to you that that $4 billion that is due and owing the American people is not an odious part of that particular debt

MR. BREMER: No, but you're going to have a hard time making the argument to everybody else that their debt shouldn't get paid and ours should.

REP. DELAHUNT: Well, I understand that but I think it's important we get that out on the table.

REP. DELAHUNT: And you make, I think, a very valid point about the Constitution. Who currently is writing the Constitution? Do we have a preliminary draft?

MR. BREMER: Nobody is writing the Constitution because the next step along the path to sovereignty is for them to convene a Constitutional conference to write --

REP. DELAHUNT: By the governing council? Okay. I appreciate that answer, the succinctness of it. When it comes to the governing council, we have been visited lately by Mr. Chalabi, Mr. Allawi and Mr. Al-Barak, who claim that they can do better in terms of the costs of reconstruction than you and the CPA. In fact, Mr. Barak has made the statement that where they spend $1 billion, we would spend $100 million. Now, clearly you appointed -- you were the appointing authority of this 25 member coalition. Is that a correct statement?

REP. DELAHUNT: And do you agree with your appointees or do you have a difference of opinion?

MR. BREMER: No. They are exercising that most fundamental of democratic freedoms, the freedom of speech.

MR. BREMER: I have profound respect for Mr. Al-Barak. He is a wonderful man. He's a lawyer who set up a human rights --

MR. BREMER: Now, look, if they -- if as we go forward -- and I want to point out that the $20 billion request was done by the Iraqi ministry. These were not our projects and numbers. If we find that -- you know, if Mr. Al-Barak can find a way for us to do something for 10 percent that we were going to spend 100 percent on, I'm not going to say no. I'm a taxpayer.

REP. DELAHUNT: I understand. And you've answered my question. In terms of the selection process of the 25 member council, how did that occur? And I'm thinking specifically of Mr. Chalabi. Mr. Chalabi is a controversial figure. We know that he was sentenced to some 22 years by a Jordanian court for -- I don't know whether it was money laundering or bank fraud.

Did we ever consult with the Kingdom of Jordan regarding his particular selection?

MR. BREMER: The process of selection was an extremely intense and complicated one that went on for about 60 days. And I had a team, an interagency team, and a team of U.S.-British experienced political officers, area experts, which I am not, that worked 18 hours a day. Someday there's a great book or maybe several to be written about that. It involved lots of consultations with lots of Iraqis. It did not involve consultations with other countries.

REP. DELAHUNT: It did not involve? I just would submit to you that, you know, clearly particularly on this particular month, he is the president of the council and I understand took the seat at the United Nations hearing. You know, we should give due consideration to other nations in that neighborhood, particularly Jordan, who has been supportive. One last question if I may --

REP. LEACH: The time of the gentleman has expired. There's a slight possibility of a next round, but I want to get to everybody if that's all right.

And, Ambassador Bremer, thank you and I would join with my colleagues in thanking you and your staff for your courage and your competency extremely. I can't think of a more difficult position to be in and you're doing it with great poise, tact, and with a great deal of expertise, so we thank you. I do have two questions. I'd like to ask first the general comment. Obviously the reconstruction costs and the whole issue of burden sharing is something that really I think on both sides of the aisle concerns a great many of us.

You know, the cost of rebuilding is not just attributable to the war. I think that would be a minor part of it. It's the long-term effects of sanctions which the international community collectively leveled upon, and rightly so, on Saddam Hussein and his own dictatorship and what his bullies -- and, you know, the effect of that. It's just too easy for the international community in many of the individual countries to wash their hands and say -- and walk away from it like they had no part in this. They have, I think, a moral duty to be involved.

And I would ask you if you would comment on what the realistic expectations might be going into Madrid. You know, for them to get over that -- there was a disagreement on the war. The reconstruction is really a whole different kettle of fish and they need to be involved with that robustly, what we might expect to derive from that.

Let me just say a word to you about the loans that had been mentioned earlier, just my sense in that. There's a lot of surface appeal to saying we ought to turn the $20 billion or a portion of that into a loan. I would think that that might have a chilling effect on our donor conference in Madrid and anything thereafter where everybody might want to get down to the loan rather than actually forking over that money which is so vitally needed by the Iraqis. So that chilling effect would actually hurt everything we're trying to do.

And secondly, the question on police trainers. I think there's some $800 million requested to train police. How confident are we that we can vet properly the police, military, when it comes -- and we're talking police here I guess mostly -- so that -- you know, we know in Guantanamo some of our own people are now under suspicion. I was recently down there. I actually met with the Islamic captain, the military West Pointer who's from New Jersey, who I was very impressed with, who is now under a cloud of suspicion about whether or not he is involved in something nefarious. Certainly I hope he isn't.

But I was very impressed with him. I spent a good part of the day in and out talking to him about what his feedback was while I was there. Vetting is always a very, very difficult thing. What confidence do we have on that?

MR. BREMER: Thank you, Congressman. I think the point about loans is very well taken. I am concerned that if we move in that direction, we will find it impossible to persuade other countries to do anything other than loans. And again, you're sooner or later going to run up against the fact that this is a country that cannot service its existing debt. And if you then have to say, well, let's get rid of the debt before you decide what to do about the additional capital that the country needs, we're going to be years before we get the capital in there from the other donors. And so I really am concerned.

From an American national security point of view, we must show real progress in the next 12 to 18 months. That is my assessment. That's not only my assessment, it's the assessment of my entire team, it's the assessment of the coalition forces, the assessment of the other coalition governments. We do not have two years to think about and worry about what we're going to do about the loans and whether other donations coming in are loans.

Now, on the donors' conference it's hard to say what will happen. We're really only at the beginning of the process, but I can sort of scope the problem for you. The World Bank has not yet finished entirely its assessment of Iraq's needs, but it's currently looking like it's going to come out somewhere between $60 billion and $70 billion needed for the Iraqi economy over the next four to five years. It's important to remember that's a four to five year span. We are taking $20 billion, as I said in answer to an earlier question, as the most urgent essential stuff that serves American interests. Get the infrastructure going, get the army up, get a police trained.

So there's a gap there. And some of that gap will be filled by the Iraqis in the years out. When they start to generate enough oil they can take care of those reconstruction needs. And some of them we hope will be by the international financial institutions, some will be by other donors, but I can't give you numbers. We hope it's a substantial amount.

Final point. I know time is out but on the police training you're quite right. Vetting is going to be a serious issue, as it already is, in bringing members into the army and people into the police. We do our best on that and we will certainly make mistakes, as apparently one may have been made in our own military services. But it's a sensitive issue we'll work hard on.

REP. LEACH: Thank you very much. Let me just note very quickly the ambassador has a 6:00 deadline, there are five members left. We're going to try to get everybody in.

REP. SCHIFF: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to begin at the outset to echo some of the comments that you made regarding the ambassador's service and that of your staff. We very much appreciate the fact you're in harm's way and you are doing extraordinarily important work. Mr. Coralogis was wonderful to show round our delegation. We were in Iraq last month and we met one of your staff, for example, that had a fresh scar where a bullet grazed his temple. He was working in the healthcare area and, you know, back on the job right after being shot at and almost successfully shot at. So it really is a tribute to you and your staff.

I have a few questions. I'm going to start with the first one, see if I can get to any of the others. There was a report to that was referred to earlier, this final draft of which I think you indicated you had a presentation of a slide show. The conclusions in this final draft of lessons learned from Iraq are very significant, the main one being that there was inadequate post-war planning.

There was a lack of coordination, unification of a plan between State and Defense, as well as inadequate handling of the weapons of mass destruction issue. I know you can't comment on the report, but I wonder if you could share with us what the status of the post-war planning was when you took over. In other words, how much of what you are doing now is in line with the pre-war/post-war plan, if you understand my question?

MR. BREMER: Yeah, I understand the question. Let me try to answer it as directly as I can. I've heard lots of stories about the pre-war planning being inadequate and there was this or that. I have to say, Congressman, I have not had a chance to look at the pre-war planning. I simply have not had time and I don't anticipate I'm going to have time. I'm driving out 100 miles an hour looking at the front, and I don't have time to look in the rearview mirror.

So I honestly can't give you an assessment of how that planning was. It will make a great study for somebody in his Ph.D.

I inherited a plan or a process of planning from Jay Garner when I got there that was a short-term plan very much oriented towards what were we going to try to do over the next 30 days before he left. He left in the middle of June. We in the meanwhile worked on the various -- carried forward the various elements of that plan that had to do with the things we're still dealing with, the infrastructure, electricity, water, hospitals, schools. And we have articulated as we've gone forward what we see as the problems going forward, which is what you have in the supplemental, enlightened by our very close work with the relevant Iraqi ministries. That's where the supplemental's emphasis has come from.

REP. SCHIFF: Ambassador, if I can interrupt, if you haven't read the pre-war plan and basically what you were given when you took this assignment was what Mr. Garner had pursued, and you've been essentially improvising since in light of the needs that you're confronting. If you didn't have a plan going into the job about how much personnel you would need, how much the Iraqis would take here for themselves, how much you would be responsible for, what the status of the infrastructure was, et cetera, where the division would be between the CPA and the military in terms of reconstruction. Have you had to basically do that all yourself?

MR. BREMER: No, no. We have planning staff and the military has a planning staff, General Abizaid has a planning staff.

REP. SCHIFF: But I understand that. But what I'm asking is you and your planning staff and the other -- the military command and its planning staff, are you operating at all on the basis of planning that was done in advance so that you would not have to learn as you go.

MR. BREMER: Yes. But what we found was that the assumptions that were made, particularly about the state of the infrastructure, were not correct. We found an infrastructure that was considerably more degraded than anybody understood it was to be, particularly in the area of power generation, for example, which is one of our major emphasis. We already knew we were going to have a problem re- establishing power generation. It was one of the priorities that Jay Garner was working on. But what we didn't know until we really got into it was how much it had been degenerated.

It was clearly already a priority. It was the largest single part of the Bechtel contract, which was signed before I got there, so we knew we had a power generation problem, we just didn't know what the scope was and how hard it was going to be to fix. So we had been changing our planning, we had been putting more money into that. We'd just put another $300 million into it two weeks ago.

We're in a combat situation where the situation is fluid and where we have to be flexible and we have to move forward as the situation reveals itself, and that's what we've been doing.

REP. SCHIFF: Ambassador, I understand that. But the impression I have is that while the war plan was extraordinarily well thought out and gamed out in the sense of each scenario if they used chemical weapons, this is how we handle it, if they go after our supply routes, this is how we handle out. Although that extensive gaming out was done on the war plan --

REP. LEACH: Excuse me, the time of the gentleman. If he can have something for a 10 second response.

REP. SCHIFF: Yeah, and I will. There was no such gaming out of the scenarios for the post-war plan, such as what if our expectations on infrastructure turn out to be wrong, what if our expectations about guerilla warfare logistics turn out to be wrong?

REP. LEACH: I'm sorry, is there a question here? It's not -- I must turn. We have four people. You're over by a minute.

Mr. Ambassador, I am one that looks at the situation in Iraq and sees the glass as being half full. I believe that the accomplishments are extraordinary, starting with the meeting of all of our strategic goals at the outset of the war in a timeframe that I think is certainly historic, with a minimum of loss of life. I think the reconstruction is going on with an incredible amount of progress, so I want to state that on the front end and I want to commend you, of course, as others have done, for your efforts on our behalf.

I have heard now twice something, however, that is quite disconcerting and just need to get your response. Someone was on television, I'm told, just earlier today. I think it was someone who had acted originally as a human shield in Iraq but has since sort of seen the light, come away and essentially is talking about the progress we're making. But he waved something in his hand that he called the draft constitution. And part of that, he said -- and this is the second time I've heard this -- that part of that draft constitution establishes Islam as the official religion of Iraq, this new government in Iraq.

Number one, do you know if that is true? And number two, if is true, what does that mean? What are they really getting at here? And what would you do in response to some sort of movement along those lines to let's say impose Sharia law in this new Iraq?

MR. BREMER: Well, I don't know what he was waving around. There is no draft constitution that I'm aware of, because as I answered earlier, there isn't even a convention set up to draft it. That doesn't exclude that there are people drafting pieces of paper that has no status. I don't know what really to say about.

REP. TANCREDO: Okay. So that may be just something he pulled out of the sky, so to speak. But what would you do? What would be our response if that were something that were to develop inside this discussion?

MR. BREMER: Well, let's see what they come up with. The constitution that many Iraqis look back to is -- and the only one that really is a serious constitution was drafted by the British in 1925. Saddam operated under a series of what he called temporary constitutions. Then he didn't pay any attention to them either. So you really have to go back to 1925. Article 13 of that constitution established that Islam was the religion of the majority of the Iraqi people, but also established freedom of religion. And it may well be that that's the religion that the constitution will go, but since they haven't even convened the group yet, I really can't comment as to what will happen.

REP. TANCREDO: And you can't even anticipate the possibility of them doing something like, let's say proposing as part of the constitution a Sharia law?

MR. BREMER: Well, there are countries all over the world with established religion, including the United Kingdom.

MR. BREMER: No. Our objection would be -- our red line is respect for individual rights, including the freedom of religion, the rights of women, et cetera.

MR. BREMER: But I don't think it's possible to make -- draw a line in the sand on the question of establishing religion.

REP. TANCREDO: Right. And that's why I asked what you thought it would mean if they were to say something like the official religion. That could have many interpretations.

Mr. Ambassador, thank you for being here. Thank you for your service to the country. I believe Congress needs more information before we can vote on the $87 billion requested. By virtue of the president's trip to the United Nations, it seems clear that he believes we need to internationalize operations in Iraq. Many of us feel we need to internationalize the reconstruction, also the security. I think we all agree we want to put Iraq back in the hands of Iraqis as quickly as possible, and I believe we need an exit strategy. Congress needs to know these things.

And I'm speaking of timetables and estimates of costs and how we will judge our progress, what standards we can use to determine how well we are succeeding or if we are not succeeding. My first question, in your statement you talk about having a plan with milestones and dates. Can you share the milestones and dates with us regarding the internationalization that we all want to see happen?

MR. BREMER: Yeah. On the -- what I was talking about there was the milestones related to the specifics that are in the supplemental, which I agree need to be provided to Congress. There are metrics -- for each of these billions of dollars, there are metrics that say we hope to do this by this many months and we hope to do that by that many months.

REP. HOEFFEL: Can you give us timetables and standards and dates for these larger questions of internationalizing security, internationalizing reconstruction?

MR. BREMER: Yes, I can give you my impression that it is necessarily a little it less precise because it doesn't involve just us. It involves, by definition, other countries. Let me first, though, make clear that this is already a substantial international operation. We have troops from 30 other countries already on the ground serving us and another half dozen getting ready to.

REP. HOEFFEL: May I interrupt you? You said that before and I made a note of it. My understanding -- other than the British, the other 29 countries have a couple of hundred troops each?

MR. BREMER: Well, I don't -- I'm sure we can provide for the record. The Poles have a brigade, the Ukrainians have a brigade, the Spanish have a brigade. They're -- the Dutch have a light brigade or a heavy battalion, one or the other; it's 1,000 men. And we can submit that for the record, I guess, unless it's classified.

MR. BREMER: Now I'm being told it's classified, so I already told you what I shouldn't tell you. But anyway.

REP. HOEFFEL: Are we paying those costs or are those countries paying those costs?

MR. BREMER: You'll have to ask those questions to the military side of the Pentagon. But if you permit, I'll go back and just make two other points in answer to your question?

MR. BREMER: I have citizens from 17 other countries already on my staff in the CPA and we have pledges for reconstruction aid from 61 countries already before the donors' conference, so --

REP. HOEFFEL: Are they like campaign pledges that I get that never -- that don't seem to materialize?

MR. BREMER: Well, I can't speak for your campaign pledges so I have a hard time answering that question.

REP. HOEFFEL: You don't want them to be the same, believe me. I hope they're much more secure.

MR. BREMER: I'll take you at your word. In fact, if I run into any trouble maybe I'll come and get some advice. Look, the discussion of internationalization now really is taking place in New York over the -- and the item around which it's being discussed is this question of another Security Council resolution, which the president has said could be helpful. It may be helpful in two respects: one, in providing -- encouraging countries to provide additional troops to the multilateral force that's there; and, secondly, in encouraging countries to make donations, more substantial donations, to reconstruction.

Having been involved in negotiations in the U.N. for going on 30 years, I know enough not to guess as to what's going to happen up there. We certainly believe that the U.N. can play a vital role. We certainly believe that other countries can help us, as they are already, in reconstruction and in the military side.

REP. HOEFFEL: It does seem that the president's trip to the U.N. was not successful in terms of securing commitments of more troops or more money.

MR. BREMER: I think if you studied the statements by the White House, he didn't go there to do that. He didn't ask countries to do that, so you can't say he didn't get it when he didn't ask it.

REP. HOEFFEL: Well, actually, his trip was planned to celebrate the passage of a new U.N. resolution and we're apparently two months away from even getting a new U.N. resolution passed.

MR. BREMER: I beg to differ. I mean, his trip has been planned for six months because the president of the United States always speaks on the second day of the U.N.G.A. It's been like that since I've been in government, and that goes back 35 years.

REP. LEACH: Ambassador, we have two of our most thoughtful members that haven't asked a question. Would you -- would that be all right if I --

And thank you, Ambassador Bremer, for being here. Of course, many of us are disturbed by what is going on and that's no secret. I'm one of those. Last fall we were told by the administration that we had to go to war because Iraq, alleged, had weapons of mass destruction and nuclear weapons or a nuclear weapons program, I'm not sure which, but that this posed an imminent threat to us and our allies. And then in April Congress passed an emergency supplemental of about $78 billion to fund this war to save us from those weapons of mass destruction, which haven't been found yet.

Now we are being asked -- the American taxpayers are being asked to pay another $87 billion installment. But this time it's for a new mission: the war on terrorism in Iraq and for Iraqi reconstruction. Mr. Ambassador, the American people want to know how this $166 billion now is going -- is being spent, what our exit strategy is, and just how much we are going to have to pay to build Iraqi houses, connect Iraqi electrical grids and construct Iraqi schools. And it's not that we are isolationist or begrudge the Iraqi people. Our country bombed the country and we should rebuild what we destroyed.

And I must say that I'm a bit taken aback by your comment that you indicated you didn't know how many Iraqi civilians have been killed, because this is quite an important bit of information to know just in terms of reconstruction efforts. And so I guess my first question is how much out of this $20 billion is actually for repairing the damage that our bombing did, versus -- and we are responsible for that, but versus long-term development efforts that, of course, will bring millions of dollars in probably no-bid contracts to Halliburton and Bechtel and other corporations. So I'd like to know about that $20 billion. What is it, how much out of that is it based on the damage that we have created versus long-term development efforts?

Secondly, I just want to know how we convince the American people to support $87 billion when we are told that there's no money for education in America, for infrastructure or housing in our own country? And finally let me just comment on this in terms of what you said as it relates to the Iraqi Governing Council. I guess that we want to turn Iraq over to the Iraqi people. It seems curious to me that you are already disagreeing with the Iraqi Governing Council in terms of the real cost required for reconstruction. Obviously they're going to be the people involved in this. They should know and why would we not want to believe them when this is their country and they've asked us to look at this again?

Those are my three questions and I'd like to hear your response. And, again, thank you for your service and thank you for being --

MR. BREMER: Thank you, Congresswoman. It's very hard to parse exactly what out of this is repairing war damage, because you have situations like -- I mean, you've got $5 billion in here to create a police force and an army. And the reason for that is because that will allow us, as I said in my opening remarks, to put an Iraqi face on security faster, which in turn allows us to get out faster. And I think that's money well spent. It's spent on Iraqi security but it's also spent on our security. So you have to go through it almost line by line. We did substantial damage to the electrical transmission systems during the war that has to be repaired.

But a lot of the money here, as I said in my opening statement, is money that is an effort to try to put Iraq into a safe environment where we succeed. And I think it's important, Congresswoman -- you used and Congressman Schiff used the term -- no, Congressman Hoeffel used the term "exit strategy." I think we need to be very careful not to use that term. It's not that we shouldn't have a plan for an end state, but that we -- if we talk an awful lot about exit strategies, what we're doing is encouraging our enemies to say, we can outwait the Americans.

We encourage the terrorists to think they can win there and they can't win there. We'll stay there until the job is done, as the president has said. I don't know how long that will take. Of all the people, I'm the one who wants it to be less time rather than more.

On your question as to turning over to the Iraqis, of course we do want to turn over to the Iraqis. And as I said in answer to the earlier question from Mr. Delahunt, if we -- if the Iraqi Governing Council has some way to save us money as we go forward, we should pay attention to that, and we will. But these figures were agreed upon by the Iraqi ministries. These are not numbers that we made up. These are worked on with the Iraqi government. They understand that. There were two members for the governing -- there were two members of the ministries -- two ministers here earlier this week who met with many people in Congress and met with the president, talking about in particular electricity and water resources.

So we'll work very closely with the Iraqis on these issues and if they come up with better ideas, we're certainly open-minded.

Let me just say thank you, Ambassador, for your very candid response and I must say that this sounds like -- especially based on your comment with regard to exit strategy, it just sounds like another blank check that we're providing and I'm sorry that we're at that point. Thank you.

Mr. Ambassador, I want to thank you for allowing yourself to come here and not being able to give the information that somebody has and didn't share with you. You're being used. I would hope that someone could come here and answer our questions. So let me apologize putting you on the spot in the hot seat, because you cannot give us the information we need upon which to determine if --

I'm not voting for $87 billion, so just put it there upfront, because I have not been given the information upon which to make a decision as to how we use taxpayers' money. I cannot really find what that clear vision and clear plan, and these are your words. I took down your words. I haven't heard it yet. I haven't heard an exit strategy and what you just said in response to Ms. Lee is that we shouldn't use that exit strategy, so that means it's open ended.

I haven't heard an estimate of what you think it's going to cost for us to continue to occupy Iraq. I haven't heard how long it's going to take to develop a constitution and who will do it. But I do see in the request that there's $140 million for State Department operations which provides secure, temporary State Department facilities in Iraq, and ensures that funds are available to pay reward in the war on terror. We were told by the president the war on terror was over. We were told May 1 that the conflict was over. And we have lost more human beings -- American human beings since we were told the conflict was over.

I've heard you say that you cannot give us the figures of how many human beings who are of Iraqi descent have died. That is very, very disturbing to me. My decision will be based on information. This committee met before. There was a vote that said we could not request from this committee the report that supposedly is in draft form that tells us what we did well and what we did not so well. Shock and awe. It was a shock and awe to me. We were glorifying the invasion.

And I'm sure innocent people were killed because you couldn't target that specifically. I am shocked and awed that we did not know the condition of the infrastructure before we went, because there was an imminent -- and these are words I've heard today, imminent and urgent need to strike now. And I'm appalled that we are treating it so lightly.

And, Mr. Bremer, I must really apologize to you because I'm not putting it on your shoulders. You're not the person for me to put it on your shoulders. You're trying to do the best you can do. But if you don't have the information, if you don't have the report -- and I think that was the response I heard earlier -- we don't have the information, it is kept from us, then how do we plan for the future?

And so would you respond to the best of your ability to what you know, how long you think we have to stay there in occupation, and what you think will be the cost, and why you feel that our allies that we insulted, we made fun of -- Germany, France, Russia -- particularly France, that they're going to kick in the supplemental money that we're going to need. And do you think that you're going to have to come back to us again, like we're going back to these countries, and ask for additional supplement?

MR. BREMER: Thank you, Congresswoman. Let me just be clear on that point about exit strategy. It was not that we shouldn't have a plan, but that I am very uncomfortable with using that term publicly because I think it encourages our enemies. That's my only point about exit strategy.

The second point: as far as I know, the president never said the war on terror was over. In fact, if you read his speech on September 14, 2001, he very explicitly said this is going to be a long war and it's going to take years, and he has repeated that over and over. He never said --

REP. WATSON: We were sitting in the chambers when he said that. I'm going to get the tape and I'll send it to you.

MR. BREMER: He repeated on Tuesday in New York that the war on terror was an ongoing war and he called on the world to help us in it.

On the point about innocent people killed, I'm sure there were innocent people killed. But I'm also sure that there's no example in military history of --

REP. WATSON: Hold on. Yield for a minute. So that you can give me a direct response to the question I'm asking, I'm not talking about any other war. I'm talking about this invasion, this war of choice in Iraq. Can you give me a number of innocent civilians that were killed? I don't think you can.

MR. BREMER: -- madam, of every war in recorded history. We still don't know how many --

MR. BREMER: Your time is up already, ma'am, so I'm on my time now and I will take --

MR. BREMER: With the indulgence of the acting chair, I will take a minute to answer this question. There is no --

REP. WATSON: No. Fine. I'm through. Give my time -- I yield back the rest of my time.

MR. BREMER: Can I take the rest of her time and answer this question, Mr. Chairman?

MR. BREMER: There is no war in recorded history where there is an accurate record of innocent civilians who have been killed. We still don't know how many innocent people were killed in the Korean War. We don't know how many innocent people were killed in the Second World War, and historians have had 50 years to study that matter.

So let's start with the proposition that this was a war where less collateral damage was done than any war in history, where in three weeks the brave young men of the Coalition freed a country of 25 million people from one of the great tyrannies of the century. Let's keep a little bit of perspective as we discuss this matter and not try to make rhetorical points about innocent people getting killed. It's always a tragedy when innocent people get killed, but let's remember what happened here.

REP. LEACH: I appreciate that. The only other addition I would make to this, there's always a perspective in all events and it would be intriguing to take approximately a decade period and try to assess how many Iraqi innocents were killed by Saddam Hussein and then tie it into the period we're in, and it's quite possible far fewer have been killed, for example, today than over this decade -- or over the last six months than over that decade. And that, I think, would be a very relevant kind of --

MR. BREMER: Good point, Mr. Chairman. The minimum number of civilians killed by Saddam, according to respected human rights organizations, is 300,000. We are well short of that.

REP. LEACH: Let me thank you. These are tumultuous times and there are also very difficult judgment call circumstances. And however people come down on the issues, I want to just express the respect of the committee that very good Americans are doing the best they can and we're very appreciative. And we thank you, we thank Tom, we thank Walt, we thank all the people that you're working with. The committee is adjourned.