PR PETRAEUS & BLACKWATER

Blackwater has been accused by the Iraqi government of recently killing innocent civilians and of have a history of doing so. Back in January¹, Gen. PR claimed that these forces play in important role in Iraq because they make up for the lack of sufficient numbers of American troops. I wonder what he thinks now?

SEN. MCCAIN: And yet, your numbers by any estimate or formula that you
use, that you're receiving, are either inadequate or bare minimum. Does
that concern you?

GEN. PETRAEUS: It does, sir. If you look at the Counterinsurgency Manual, for example, and you have the 1-to-50 ratio of counterinsurgents to citizens,you'd say that well, for Baghdad's population you should have somewhere around 120,000 security forces. If you add all of the U.S. forces that will be on the ground when we have the full increase in forces, including Special Operations Forces, all the Iraqi forces -- military and police -- you get to about 85,000. Not all of those are as effective as we might want them to be, particularly on the police side, as you know. However, there are tens of thousands of contract security forces and ministerial security forces that do, in fact, guard facilities and secure institutions, and so forth, that our forces --coalition or Iraqi forces -- would otherwise have to guard and secure. And so that does give me the reason to believe that we can accomplish the mission in Baghdad with the additional forces.

¹Copyright 2007 Federal News Service, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
Federal News Service

January 23, 2007 Tuesday

SECTION: CAPITOL HILL HEARING

LENGTH: 36004 words

HEADLINE: HEARING OF THE SENATE ARMED SERVICES
COMMITTEE;
SUBJECT: NOMINATION OF LIEUTENANT GENERAL DAVID H.
PETRAEUS, U.S. ARMY, TO BE GENERAL AND COMMANDER,
MULTINATIONAL FORCES IRAQ;
CHAIRED BY: SENATOR CARL LEVIN (D-MI);
WITNESS: LIEUTENANT GENERAL DAVID PETRAEUS, U.S. ARMY;

LOCATION: 325 RUSSELL SENATE OFFICE BUILDING,
WASHINGTON, D.C.