SECDEF GATES GIVES US A TIMETABLE

SOURCE:
January 12, 2007 Friday
SECTION: CAPITOL HILL HEARING
LENGTH: 34692 words
HEADLINE: HEARING OF THE SENATE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE; SUBJECT: IRAQ; WITNESSES: ROBERT GATES, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE; PETER PACE, CHAIRMAN, JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF;
CHAIRED BY: SENATOR CARL LEVIN (D-MI); LOCATION: 216 HART SENATE OFFICE BUILDING, WASHINGTON, D.C.
Copyright 2007 Federal News Service, Inc.
(FROM LEXIS-NEXIS)

SEN. LEVIN: Now, the Iraqis have made both military and political commitments to us; is that correct?
SEC. GATES: Yes, sir.
SEN. LEVIN: And if those commitments are not kept, then what?
SEC. GATES: I would say two things. First, Mr. Chairman, as I indicated in my statement, I think we're going to know fairly early in this process whether the Iraqis are, in fact, prepared to fulfill the commitments that they've made to us in terms of being able to go into all neighborhoods, in terms of a lack of political interference in military operations, and things like that. So I think that we'll have a pretty good idea early on.
SEN. LEVIN: Like when?
SEC. GATES: Well, I would think within -- on the military side, probably within a couple of months.

Gen. Pace then confirms that the Iraqis have failed to live up to their previous commitments:

SEN. LEVIN: Ambassador Khalilzad said in August that Iraq faces an urgent crisis in securing Baghdad. That's August. He said that to combat this complex problem of Prime Minister Maliki's -- to combat this complex problem, Prime Minister Maliki's government has made securing Baghdad its top priority. The Iraqi government's Baghdad security plan has three principal components, Ambassador Khalilzad said. Three principal components. Those components are first, stabilize Baghdad zone by zone. Four Iraqi army battalions, two coalition brigades, and five military police companies will be redeployed to Baghdad, resulting in more than 12,000 additional forces on the city streets.

Did that happen?

GEN. PACE: No, sir.

SEN. LEVIN: Then the ambassador also said that after joint coalition and Iraqi military operations have secured a neighborhood or district, a structure of Iraqi security forces sufficient to maintain the peace is expected to be left in place.

Did that happen?

SEC. GATES: I'd better defer to General Pace, since I wasn't here then.

GEN. PACE: It did not, sir, no.

SEN. LEVIN: Did not happen.

In October, Prime Minister Maliki said the initial date that we've set for disbanding the militias is the end of this year or the beginning of next year.

Did that happen?

GEN. PACE: No, sir, it did not.

SEN. LEVIN: Maliki also said that a government committee was formed in October to give the militias a deadline to lay down their arms.

Did that happen?

GEN. PACE: To my knowledge, it did not, sir.

Uh oh, Gates is wrong about polls:

SEC. GATES:I remember that when President -- first President Bush made the decision to throw Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait, the polls showed about 15 percent of the American people supported that action.

That's simply not true:

"Prior to the 1991 bombing of Baghdad, Americans were evenly divided as to whether to start action, or to give economic sanctions more time." LINK

Let's hope that Gates just made a simple mistake and did not deliberately try to mislead.

I didn't know this about the Shi'a:

SEC. GATES: Yes, sir. I think, in reality, there are four wars going on in Iraq right now simultaneously -- a Shi'a on Shi'a conflict in the South; sectarian violence, particularly in Baghdad, but also in Diyala and a couple of other provinces; an insurgency; and al Qaeda.

[snip]

Al Qaeda and the insurgents continue to inflict -- and the Shi'a extremists, the Jaish al-Mahdi, continue to inflict the vast preponderance of American casualties, not the sectarian -- not being caught in a cross-fire