Part 2 of Paul Wolfowitz Iraq Trip- DOD 7-23-03
Mr. Wolfowitz (con't) "We were flown around in part of the country by a wonderful Air National Guard crew from Nashville, Tennessee, and I want to say to the people of Nashville what great work they're doing. Those folks have been there for a very long time. In fact, I promised them to try to find an explanation of whether the jobs are being distributed fairly. They have a joke among themselves that they have a departure date: it's six weeks from now, whenever "now" is. (Light laughter.) Well, that's not acceptable. I mean, you can understand how frustrating that is. And we are working on giving -- trying to give people certainty, give their families certainty. It's one of the most difficult things.But look, you can always go and find somebody, especially if you wheedle it out of them -- it's tough duty. But the more amazing thing is how many of them are spirited -- overwhelming number of them are spirited, excited, have a real sense of service.Yes, sir?
Q Mr. Secretary, going back to what you just said about the Italian Carabinieri, the Portuguese are also sending their unfortunately named Republican Guard, which is the equivalent of the Italian force.
Mr. Wolfowitz: Just keep saying it in Portuguese, and no one will notice the similarity…
Q (Laughs.) I'm wondering, as part of your reputation as an advanced, look-ahead type of thinker, as well as Secretary Rumsfeld's idea of transformation, is it time to start thinking about creating within the U.S. military an equivalent service to the Carabinieri for a future type of engagement in which the U.S. is likely to find itself or could find itself, as it is in Iraq?
The 3rd ID, as you pointed out, is a terrific force for doing what it had to do, not necessarily trained for peacekeeping or after- war effects, not to criticize them, but not what they are trained for.
Mr. Wolfowitz: I don't think -- I mean, the parallel question would be, is it -- isn't it time for the Portuguese Republican Guard -- (chuckling) -- unfortunately named -- to start developing air assault divisions and heavy tank divisions? The answer to that is obviously no. I mean, a little bit of specialization is a wonderful thing.If anything, I think, what it's time to do is to take perhaps the number-one lesson learned from this war, which we knew going into this war, which is that jointness counts and that we took joint operations to a level -- probably an order of magnitude at least above what it was 10 years ago, and we're going to try to push it another order of magnitude in the next 10 years.
Q Well --
Mr. Wolfowitz: But jointness among U.S. services -- we're just still in the Industrial Age. Let me use my --
Q But that would not mean --
Mr. Wolfowitz: -- with respect to jointness among international forces. And that's something we do need to work on. I mean, we should have, to begin with, a better sense of those capabilities -- who's got them, who can provide them, what things they need from us to help them get there. But I don't think we should try to go around duplicating everything that someone else has that's useful. Let's use it.
Q You would be comfortable, then, in having the U.S. military locked into sort of a role where the postwar situation would be the jointness aspects --
Mr. Wolfowitz: You've overstating what I said. I am comfortable having help from other people. I think the more we have a coalition at every stage of these problems, the better it is. But it's very clear that generally speaking, the U.S. is the only country that can do the high end. If that's going to be the case, then it's reasonable to ask other countries to do more at the low end. That doesn't mean necessarily in time -- I mean, throughout any operation, there's a high end, if you know what I mean by that -- I mean, that requires more investment, more training -- and a low end.Yes, sir?
Q From your trip, what's the take-away impression you have of the existence of tactical weapons of mass destruction, not programs, but actual tactical weapons, which were the rationale, in part, for the war?
Mr. Wolfowitz: This is a very important issue. It is under the direction of George Tenet, with David Kay and General Keith Dayton in the field managing it. There was nothing I could do being there to help them in their search, except to get, as I did, from them an appreciation of whether there are resources back here that we could make available to them, and I come back with a bit of a homework assignment from David Kay. But he's going to have to be the one -- to use our phrase -- a time and place of his choosing to decide when he has something to tell.
Q Sir, can we just go back to the photographs for a moment. You said that there are several things you're looking at, at the end of the day, that you can show the Iraqi people --
Mr. Wolfowitz: I'm not going to say more about that.
Q Well, let me ask you this --
Mr. Wolfowitz: You can ask a different question.
Q -- when you say the end of the day, do you mean the end of this day, there'll be a decision today?
Mr. Wolfowitz: Oh, no, no. I meant just figuratively.
Q And is there any possibility you'd actually show the bodies, that you may not think photographs is enough?
Mr. Wolfowitz: (Laughing) Next question! I really can't -- there are decisions being made by other people while we sit here and talk, so I really can't tell you.
STAFF: I think we have time for maybe one more. I'm sorry, we have to go.
Q Mr. Secretary, you mentioned contract killings of U.S. troops. Can you elaborate? Can you give us any hard evidence of how many or which of the -- that some of these killings in recent days or weeks have in fact been contract killings, how much these folks are being paid to kill U.S. troops, whom they're being paid by?
Mr. Wolfowitz: I can't. I can tell you that it wasn't just once, but over and over again, and that we were briefed by commanders that this was the perception, this was the intelligence assessment. The 4th Infantry Division has a flow chart, diagram, basically, that sort of goes from the mid-level Ba'athists through the facilitators down to the individual perpetrators. And it's clear they're happy to send young men out to die, and the young men, apparently at the moment, will do a lot for a little bit of money. But I think the key to that is cleaning up the middle and upper levels.I think the evidence for that comes from a lot of sources; it comes from Iraqis telling them that. I didn't only hear it from the military, by the way, I heard it from Iraqis that we talked to. I'm sure it comes from individuals that they capture. I can't tell you exactly all the details, and maybe that's something we in fact should get a briefing on. But it was a uniform story with individual variations in different places.This has to be it. Okay, thank you very much.
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