This week, as Baghdad suffered from the worst attacks in months, Senate Democrats continued to pursue aggressive oversight of the President's conduct of the Iraq war. The President needs to drop his veto threat and work with Congress to fund the troops and give them a strategy they deserve.
Thursday, April 19th
Senate Armed Services Committee
"Hearing to receive testimony on the Department of Defense's Management of costs under the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program (LOGCAP) contract in Iraq."
Senator Dorgan described the key findings from oversight hearings on Halliburton's performance under the LOGCAP contract, highlighting a record of outrageous abuses.
SEN. DORGAN: "Under the LOGCAP contract, Halliburton allowed our troops in Iraq to shower, bathe, and sometimes brush their teeth with water that was tested positive for E. coli and Coliform Bacteria, and was more contaminated than raw water from the highly polluted Euphrates River." The Senator cited another 19 contracting abuses, describing how, "Halliburton served the troops food that had spoiled or passed its expiration date"; "charged taxpayers for services it never provided and tens of thousands of meals that it never served"; "sent unarmed truck drivers into a known combat zone without warning them of the danger, resulting in the deaths of six truck drivers and two soldiers."
Wednesday, April 18th
Senate Armed Committee, Subcommittee on Personnel and Subcommittee on Readiness and Management Support
"To Receive Testimony on the Readiness Impact of Quality of Life and Family Support Programs to Assist Families of Active Duty, National Guard, and Reserve Military Personnel in Review of the Defense Authorization Request for Fiscal Year 2008 and the Future Years Defense Program"
Senators and witnesses emphasized that support for military families is a critical factor in military readiness and retention.
SEN. AKAKA: I know that it is not only our men and women in uniform but also their families who serve our nation and who bear the brunt of the heavy demands placed on our military. Just as we are responsible for the well-being of our service members, likewise we have a responsibility to their families. As Chairman of the Readiness subcommittee, I asked that we hold this hearing today because I am convinced that how well we care for the families of our service members directly affects the quality of our military.
SEN. BEN NELSON: We all understand that our military personnel cannot focus on the mission at hand if they are distracted with worries about whether their families are being taken care of. Taking good care of military families translates directly to improved military readiness. It is our intent to support policies and programs that foster a family-friendly environment for our military families.
Dr. Lynda C. Davis, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Military Personnel Policy: Department of the Navy family programs are a vital part of our overall personnel readiness and are key to recruiting and retention. When a Sailor or Marine knows that his/her family is being cared for, he or she can concentrate on their mission.
John McLaurin, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Human Resources: Family wellbeing and quality of life are critical to the readiness of our Soldiers and have a profound effect on decisions regarding whether the Soldiers will remain in the Army or leave it when their enlistments or obligations are over.
Lieutenant General Roger A. Brady, Deputy Chief of Staff for Manpower and Personnel, U.S. Air Force: The statement, "We recruit the member, but we retain the family" is not a cliché but has been a reality in the Air Force for many years. The quality of life we provide for our Airmen and their families is a distinct determining factor in how long they remain in our service.
The decision to extend Army tours of active duty from 12 to 15 months and increased demands on the National Guard have placed even greater strains on both military families and military readiness.
Michael L. Dominguez, Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness: Last week, Secretary of Defense Gates announced his decision to extend from 12 to 15 months the tours for active Army soldiers in Central Command. That was a difficult decision for the Secretary as these longer tours will be hard on Army families. While a 15 month tour is an unpleasant prospect, we hope this decision will allow most soldiers a full year at home between deployments and will preclude the need for unplanned tour extensions during a deployment.
Joyce Wessel Raezer, Chief Operating Officer, National Military Family Association (NMFA): As we speak, policy changes are being implemented that will affect many military families. The Army is extending active duty deployments by three months, from one year to 15 months. Several National Guard units are being readied for a second deployment, on an accelerated timetable from the guideline calling for one year deployed and five years at home. Readiness is threatened because of a shortage of equipment for training and the fact that training itself is being shortened. The readiness of the world's greatest fighting force is being threatened.
SEN. NELSON: Military parents have the very difficult and challenging task of raising children during these highly stressful times of deployment, redeployment, extended deployment and reintegration into home life upon return from deployment. The Secretary of Defense just recently announced that Army combat tours will be extended from 12 to 15 months. What impact will this have on our military families? I will be interested in hearing whether the Army is making a special effort to address the needs of the families of the service members who just learned that they will be coming home three months later than they and their families had planned on. What will the families have to say about this recent change? Parenting is challenging enough without these additional stresses. Military parents need help, especially during these trying times.
Multiple deployments have taken a significant toll on military families.
MS. Raezer: In this sixth year of the Global War on Terror, as many service members and families are experiencing their second or third deployments, family readiness is more imperative than ever.... The effect of multiple deployments is burning out many volunteers and families. At high operational tempo installations such as Fort Bragg, Camp Pendleton, and Fort Drum, volunteers and staff are constantly on alert, dealing with families at multiple stages of deployment. Sustaining a high level of engagement with families at rear detachment and installation commands is extremely draining. New challenges seem to constantly appear, including: the grief of unit families when a service member is wounded or killed, extensions, and reductions in funds and support staff. Many spouses who hear military and political leaders' pronouncements of a long war wonder if there is ever a light at the end of the tunnel.
Administration policies have exacerbated a history of cutbacks to critical military family support services.
MS. Raezer: Shortages in base operations funding are nothing new. What seems to make the crisis worse now is that war needs have exacerbated the negative effects of a long history of cutbacks. Deployed service members expect their installation quality of life services, facilities, and programs to be resourced at a level to meet the needs of their families. Cutbacks hit families hard. They are a blow to their morale, a sign that perhaps their Service or their nation does not understand or value their sacrifice. They also pile on another stressor to the long list of deployment-related challenges by making accessing services more difficult. Families are being told the cutbacks are necessary in order to ensure funds are available for the war, and in the case of Army communities, the ongoing Army transformation. Just when they need quality of life programs most, families should not be asked to do without. Their commanders should not have to make the choice between paying installation utility bills or providing family support services.
The failure to adequately provide for the health care of our wounded warriors has hurt service members, veterans, and their families.
MS. Raezer: We ask you to recognize that the military health care system, which showed signs of stress even before the start of the Global War on Terror, is now significantly taxed.... As revealed in the series of articles about Walter Reed Army Medical Center, post-deployment transitions to and from a variety of DOD, VA, and civilian medical facilities and between military and civilian life can be especially problematic for injured service members and their families. NMFA asserts that behind every wounded service member is a wounded family. Spouses, children, parents, and siblings of service members injured defending our country experience many uncertainties. Fear of the unknown and what lies ahead in future weeks, months, and even years, weighs heavily on their minds. Other concerns include the injured service member's return and reunion with their family, financial stresses, and navigating the transition process to the VA. The system should alleviate, not heighten these concerns, and provide for coordination of care that starts when the family is notified the service member has been injured and ends with the DOD and VA working together to create a seamless transition as the injured service member transfers from active duty status to veteran.
The Administration's funding of the war through emergency supplemental appropriations has hurt military families.
MS. Raezer: Military family support and quality of life facilities and programs require dedicated funding, not emergency funding. Military families are being asked to sustain their readiness. The least their country can do is make sure their support structure is consistently sustained as well. Strong families equal a strong force. Family readiness is integral to service member readiness. The cost of that readiness is an integral part of the cost of the war and a National responsibility.
Tuesday, April 17th
Senate Armed Services Committee Hearing
"Hearing to receive testimony on whether the Army and Marine Corps are properly sized, organized, and equipped to respond to the most likely missions over the next two decades while retaining adequate capability to respond to all contingencies along the spectrum of combat."
Our military is being broken, and is at risk of becoming a hollow force.
DR. KREPENEVICH: I think there, at last, is a fairly high level of agreement among the Defense Department, the Congress, and the strategic studies community that while the Army continues to perform effectively in Afghanistan and Iraq, it is under great stress. And what's even more worrisome is a lot of the trend lines, a lot of the metrics and indicators that have been alluded to today, are almost uniformly moving in a more worrisome direction, the direction that could lead our ground forces to cross that red line that separates a ready army from a hollow army.
GEN. MCCAFFREY: [The National Guard is] being broken by a policy that essentially uses it as an alternative to the standing army. In the coming year, I think we'll be forced to call up as many as nine National Guard combat brigades for second involuntary tours, never mind the combat support and combat service support units that have got to come out of the Reserve components.
Our National Guard and Reserve are not adequately sized and resourced to meet the current demands of Bush Administration policies and fulfill their national security role at home.
GEN. MCCAFFREY: Well, you know, I personally believe that a robust National Guard is essential to America's security. You start looking around a state - pick a state at random - there will be 2,000 or 3,000 state police. You look at the nation, a whole 12,000 local sheriffs' departments and local police forces. If you've got a problem, you need the National Guard, the Air Guard and the ground Guard in particular. And in particular, engineering, signal, medical, transportation - the tools that a governor needs to deal with Katrina, or with a radiological attack. So I would actually argue the National Guard is too small, and the Reserve forces are too small. I think we've had a role problem. We can't allow them to fulfill their mission unless the active forces are capable of picking up these responsibilities, and we were looking at an army of 490,000 people trying to maintain this rate of deployment, and it's simply incapable of doing so.
DR. KREPENEVICH: But when you ask, is the current Army too reliant on the Guard and Reserve, I think using the Army's own metrics, you have to say yes. The Army strives for a six-to-one rotation rate for Guard and Reserve forces, which is to say for every six Guard brigades you have, only one would be on deployment at any given time. And we've seen over the last four or five years that the Army has fallen below that ratio. So by the Army's own definition, just as the active force is overstressed, the reserve force is overstressed as well. And I think when you look at the fact that the Army has concentrated a lot of its support elements in the Reserve forces and in the National Guard, you also - if you believe as I do - that a lot of the contingencies we're going to see the most likely, as the chairman points out, are irregular warfare, stability operations, counterinsurgency, then these are the kinds of forces you're going to need more of. Not only that, but when you do talk about things like homeland security disaster relief, as General McCaffrey said, it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when we're going to get hit here at home. You're going to need those kinds of forces, not only for these external operations that deal with irregular warfare, but also here on the home front as well.
GEN. SCALES: The Guard has now become absolutely essential to our future military strategy, and frankly, I don't think - and I agree with General McCaffrey - I don't think we have enough Guardsmen now to perform both of those functions, the governor's militia as well as this quasi-professional force. And we certainly haven't given them the equipment and the training and the education that they need, to my mind, to perform either one of those.
Witnesses call for revamping Bush Administration recruitment strategies to ensure that the quality of our military forces is not compromised as we move to increase the end strength of the Army and Marine Corps.
GEN. MCCAFFREY: ...lowering the standards is the last thing we ought to do. I talk to command sergeant majors now in motor pools, they'll say 10, 20 percent of these kids we're bringing in right now simply shouldn't be in uniform. And that's going to be a problem to us, because they're going to be our staff sergeants six, seven years from now in the next crisis. We shouldn't lower our standards. We should increase the size.
GEN. SCALES: ...my concern is that we haven't been imaginative enough in using the tools that we have at our disposal, other than lowering standards. ...So my suggestion is, number one, is we need to change our policy on pay and allowances. Why can't we pay, for instance, soldiers not only for their skills, but for their risk? In other words, why can't we pay them a lot more for doing the dirty filthy job of close combat? If we did that, I think we would be able to accelerate that curve of accessions without diminishing the quality of the force.
Dr. Korb warns that we also have a moral obligation to provide our troops in Iraq with the best training before they are sent into the battlefield.
DR. KORB: We often talk about the fact that we cannot leave Iraq precipitously, because we have a moral obligation to the Iraqi people, having overthrown their government. And certainly, there is merit to that argument. We also have a moral responsibility to the young men and young women that we take into the service to ensure before we put them in harm's way that in fact they are trained to the best of our ability to do so.
General McCaffrey says that the Administration's military escalation strategy will not achieve U.S. objectives in Iraq: success requires a political and economic plan.
SEN. REED: General McCaffrey, you seem to indicate that the possibility of success of the latest development, that the surge is constrained by inadequate resources in terms of manpower, in terms of support. Is that a fair estimate?
GEN. MCCAFFREY: It may be fair, but it's probably less important than other assertions one could make. Because...it's not clear to me that we're fighting a counterinsurgency campaign in Iraq. I think it's a civil war we're trying to tamp down. And when we do tamp it down, the end result won't be delivered by five brigades, one a month from now through June, but instead by political reconciliation, by leverage of economic tools which are lacking in the current plan.
The Bush Administration is failing to adequately equip the Afghan and Iraqi security forces, an objective that is critical to securing those countries and allowing U.S. troops to come home.
GEN. MCCAFFREY: Finally, probably most importantly, a necessary but not sufficient reason for us to succeed in our goal in Iraq and Afghanistan withdrawal is to equip appropriately Afghan and Iraqi security forces. We have not done this. It's appalling to me. We look at the Iraqi security forces, they're going to have 70 Soviet helicopters at the end of this process, six C-130s, one squadron of ground-attack aircraft, a collection of junked Soviet armor -- some new, admittedly, I think 800 BTR-80s and Cougar Fighting Vehicles. What are we thinking of? We can't get out of there until these people can step forth. If we've got 800 helicopters in Iraq, why do we think 70 Soviet helicopters can allow them to control this giant country? So I think we need to re-look, lend-lease to our new allies so we can get out of there.
General McCaffrey believes that the debate over the future of our Iraq policy is helping to advance U.S. objectives in Iraq.
GEN. MCCAFFREY: Senator, one comment, certainly on that supplemental, I personally believe that the intense debate over the future of the war here in Washington is helping Ambassador Crocker and General Petraeus. I think it has put the fear of God into the Maliki government. I think their Sunni tribal leaders are saying, "My gosh, what if these people actually pull out in two years? We're 16 percent of the population. We're going to get slaughtered." So I think the political debate is a good thing, not a bad thing, in terms of the situation on the ground in Iraq.
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