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Washington, D.C.
MICHAEL GORDON: Okay, well, I think it’s about time to get started, and I guess I’m the person to decide these things, since I’m sitting up here. I’d like to welcome you to what I think will be an interesting event with General Pace, and one that we are going to do here on the record. It’s a format the Council uses, but it’s not one it uses all the time.
I think you should all be commended for coming here. I know I lived in Washington a long time, and I know that sometimes the Homeland Security Agency raises the [terrorist danger] indicator to orange, but it’s my experience that the really true alert comes when WTOP [local radio station] tells you that there’s a 50 percent chance of snow. [Laughter.] But still I think there’s a good turnout here.
Now, our guest tonight—you all have his resume, and he’s extremely well-known, so I don’t want to waste time going over that. But I’ll just say for the record that he has a very distinguished record, as the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and a long resume that I won’t rehearse. Born in Brooklyn, Naval Academy, combat experience in Vietnam, experience in Somalia, and a very familiar face to everyone who has followed the briefings and official presentations on Iraq and other important matters at the Pentagon. An overlooked fact, but one that I learned about in preparing about this, is that General Pace was an escort for [singer] Beyonce [Knowles] at the Super Bowl, escorting her to sing “The Star Spangled Banner.” Correct?
GENERAL PACE: It was a very patriotic opening ceremony. [Laughter.]
GORDON: Right. But as best I know, there is no indication that General Pace or anybody at the Defense Department had anything to do with the halftime presentation. [Laughter.]
The format that we have tonight is, basically, I’m going to ask about—we’re going to engage in—what I would really just call a dialogue. I’m going to ask some questions, and give General Pace an opportunity to explain his position—not rush him—on the topics of the day. And then the pattern will be to open it up for questions. And, again, it’s on the record. When people do give questions, it’d be good to identify yourself, and also when people speak it would be good to ask a question.
And I’m going to start with a topic that is really on everybody’s mind—I think these days the principal topic—which is Iraq. And I was one of the embedded journalists during the Iraq conflict, during the major combat phase, as they say. And as part of this experience I recall I went to Fallujah [city in Central Iraq]. It was with the Second Brigade of the 3rd ID [infantry division] when it was deployed out there to really clamp down on things there, after two other Army units had been there. And I remember that there was a system even then—there was some resistance and a system of flares that the guerrillas used to alert themselves when patrols were being conducted, and what type of patrols [they were]. But there was really nothing remotely like the sort of battle that took place last Saturday [February 14, 2004, when guerillas stormed a police station, killing 25 people and wounding at least 40]--nothing on that scale, nothing that bloody. In the time I was there things seemed to be more under control.
What I’d like to ask you—we all know that the first reports of any action are sometimes wrong, but what really happened in Fallujah on Saturday? Who was really behind it? What was the role of foreigners, if any? And do you anticipate that there are going to be more of these sorts of attacks? We’re talking about an operation in which there was a large group of insurgents. It was basically a jailbreak, and a lot of Iraqis associated with the Americans were killed.
PACE: I don’t know that I can answer all your questions. I’ll tell you the ones—the answers that I do know. First of all, to you, and to all of the media who were part of the embedded media that went into Iraq in the very early stages, thank you. And I mean that sincerely, because a lot of folks took a lot of risk at their own personal safety to be able to take this story to the public, and I honestly believe that will be a major plus when history looks back on how this particular event was covered by the news media. And to have 24/7 coverage, and to have the public be able to make their own assumptions and analysis based on what they saw on television, could not have happened without yourself, Michael, and others like you. So thanks for doing that.
The event on Saturday in Fallujah was interesting. And as you mentioned, first reports, so we are not exactly sure—in fact, we are sure, but we don’t know everything that happened, but there are some things of great interest. First of all, clearly the enemy had thought through what they were going to do. They attacked two locations at one time, both a location where the prisoners were, which is an Iraqi-controlled jail, and the other was the site from which any reinforcements might come. Of interest, maybe three or four months ago had this happened, the Iraqi forces that were responsible for the security might very well have just disappeared. As it turned out, the Iraqi forces that were responsible for security there fought very bravely, and in fact they fought so hard that they needed an ammunition re-supply. And when the U.S. commander at the scene—or in the vicinity, excuse me—was giving the additional ammunition to his Iraqi counterpart who had asked for it, he, the U.S. commander, told his Iraqi counterpart, “We are here to help you, if you’d like.” And the Iraqi counterpart’s response was, I think, very important and very significant. He said, “No, this is something that we need to do. The Iraqi people need to see Iraqi forces taking care of our own security, taking care of our own problems.”
As a result of that, the U.S. commander provided him the assistance he requested and provided him the freedom to handle the situation on his own. So we don’t know all the facts involved on how it got started, why exactly it got started. But we do know that the Iraqi armed forces responsible for protecting that facility stayed with the facility and then fought well.
GORDON: Who was really behind that attack?
PACE: Don’t know.
GORDON: Well, can I take you back a bit and ask you—while we may not know very much about the specific episode, standing back, what do we really know about the adversary that the American forces are confronting now in Iraq? I mean, it seems that no matter how many fighters are captured or killed, there always seem to be 5,000 of them. Every time someone—they’re asked an estimate of what the Iraqi force, the foreign force, that’s fighting us, how large it is. How large is this force? How centralized is it? Who’s controlling it really? What’s the mix between the indigenous opposition and foreign fighters?
PACE: Yeah, good questions. We believe that the mix between those who are indigenous Iraqis and those who have been brought in from outside the country has changed, that there are more and more people coming in from the outside, and fewer and fewer who are Iraqis themselves. And I think that as time goes on, as we get closer and closer to the end of June, when sovereignty will pass back to the Iraqi people, that the terrorists are going to see that as a threat, and they will become more frantic in their attempts to do things that will dislodge the progress being made toward getting Iraqis to have their own future in their own hands. So I think the more successful that the Iraqi Governing Council is, the more successful that we are in turning over their sovereignty to them, the more attacks we may endure as the terrorists become concerned that their cause is in fact what it is, which is doomed.
GORDON: When you say there is an increased foreign presence, what percentage is that of the force? Ten percent? Five percent?
PACE: Don’t know.
GORDON: Do we know the names of the opponents we’re fighting or key commanders, their force structure?
PACE: We know the names of some of the leaders. That’s been provided to us by some of our detainees. We’ve also had many more Iraqi civilians coming forward, pointing out not only individuals and giving us names and places, but also showing us former safe houses and the like. And because of that, since Saddam’s capture there’s been something like 100 terrorist leaders either captured or killed, many of whom we got to because Iraqi civilians came forward and told us where they were.
GORDON: One big-picture question I’d like to put to you is: What is your sort of metric or measure—measures—for determining what success the American forces are having in Iraq? Is it the number of raids? Is it the number of enemy killed? Is it the amount of money pumped into the economy? Is it the number of intelligence reports that you—you know, or good tips you receive from friendly Iraqis? What is the way in which you determine how well the war is going? And if we are successful, and if the United States is successful on the military side, how will we know it? What will Iraq look like six months from now if it’s being done right?
PACE: Well, there are a lot of things we track. We watch not only the pure military things, like the number of attacks and the frequency and the size of the attacks but, more importantly, the security environment inside of which the Iraqi people are beginning to be able to take charge of their own lives—the amount of electricity that is being produced, oil and gas going to the Iraqi people, cooking fuels and the like, schools that are being rebuilt and hospitals that are coming back on line and mosques that are being attended—all the types of things that you look for in people returning to everyday lives—street cafes and things like that. And from our perspective, all of those factors are pointing in the correct direction. And I believe, as I said before, that because the Iraqi people are in fact returning to a more normal life, because they are looking forward to having their own constitution, their own elected government officials, that the terrorists are concerned that that is not the life that they would have for the Iraqis if they could choose it, and they’re going to be disappointed in the long-term, but they’ll be probably trying to attack us in the short term.
GORDON: There’s been a debate within the military that I’ve heard from military officers about the best approach to take in Iraq. And just to sum it up simply, it’s a debate about the so-called velvet-glove model that the Marines have employed in the south [of Iraq], and talk about using now in the Sunni Triangle [the volatile area of central Iraq with an ethnic Sunni Muslim majority], which is more emphasis on establishing a relationship with the local community, less—dispensing with some of the tools the Army has used in the Sunni Triangle, surrounding villages with barbed wire, barging into homes in search of suspects, taking family members prisoner to elicit cooperation. And this debate has even gone on on the op-ed pages. Now, what’s your take on this, and which is the best model to use in Iraq? Can they both be right? You have basically two schools of thought about how to proceed, granted they’re—you know—it’s not a black-and-white issue. But what do you make about this?
PACE: Well, I think those who are trying to craft it as some kind of either-or situation really have it fundamentally wrong. Right now in Iraq you have places like down south where the Brits are that have always been, since the beginning of the war, a little less hospitable to terrorists. And therefore they have been able to be much more—“relaxed” is the wrong word, but much more open and forthcoming with the people, and trying to work with them to more quickly develop government and the infrastructure.
There are other places, like in the Baathist areas [areas populated by members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath political party], where there are many more terrorists, where more restraint of arms was required and is still required. So, to try to paint it as one type of approach versus another type of approach is not right. What you have to do is understand as commander on the ground what the neighborhood you are living in is like and use the amount of force necessary to get the basic security established. Once basic security is established, then you can start doing the reach-out type programs that work in some places right now, and will work in other places in the future. But it has more to do—has everything to do—with the security environment, and little to do with an either-or approach.
GORDON: When President Bush was a candidate, I recall that he complained or criticized the “op tempo,” the rate in which American forces were being deployed in the world, and said this was straining the military. I think it was probably an element of his [December 2001] speech at the Citadel [a military college in South Carolina]. That was a time when the United States had more forces in the Balkans [mountain area in the former-Yugoslavia], and nothing like the sort of strain that the military has been subjected to at this time. I was down at Fort Hood [Texas] recently and I remember the 1st Cav [Cavalry Division] down there is now talking about going to deploy into Iraq, and they’re telling their soldiers they’re going over there for basically a year with two rotations, and this is a commitment that is going to extend well beyond the so-called transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqi authority, however the structure. How long can the U.S. military maintain this level of commitment to Iraq and deployment at this pace, without straining the armed forces to the point where it’s important to enlarge the armed forces?
PACE: I’m responsible for doing a lot of the math that comes to the answers to your questions, and part of it is science and part of it is art. The science part is where you take the number of forces you have engaged right now, about 120,000 [troops], and you can take a look at the numbers of division and brigades you have employed and the total number of armed forces in the United States, 1.4 million active, another 800,000 Reserve, and another 400,000 individual-ready Reserve, so you can get up to about 2.6 million forces available to the U.S. military. Of that 2.6 million, you’ve got about 120,000 as I said, in Iraq. So you can do the math and tell yourself that you can sustain that for quite a long time.
The art comes in knowing whether or not this is a spike in requirements, meaning the four divisions that we have there now. We were at seven divisions about several months ago. We’re four divisions now. As we look to the future, the art part is: Is it going to be four divisions for one year or two years, or is it going to be something lower than that or something higher than that? And that’s not knowable with any preciseness, but you can extrapolate what you think is going to be the case.
As we look to the future, if we were to decide to build more forces, as some have said should be done, it would take two years to build a new division from scratch. That’s not, in my opinion, the right way to go. The right way to go is to do what the Army is doing right now, which is to take the total numbers of soldiers they have on active duty right now, and to take a look at what jobs they are performing, and to reconstruct their service, so that as [Army Chief of Staff General] Pete Schoomaker has pointed out, he has currently 33 brigades, which are one-third the size of a division. He has 33 brigades that he can employ. He will, inside the current structure of his Army, grow that 33 brigades to 43 brigades, staying inside the top line that he has. So there are things we can do with the current soldiers who are serving to better position ourselves with the kinds of skills that we need on the battlefield, without growing the Army or the Marine Corps, or any service, in response to a current spike, when what we need to be able to see out is what level of armed forces will the country need for the next five, ten, fifteen years? The math tells me that there are plenty of folks in uniform. The art tells me we have some of those folks doing the wrong jobs. And as we change from doing a job that is no longer as much needed as in the past to what is needed in the future, we’ll be able to satisfy our needs without changing the size of the overall armed forces.
GORDON: Inherent in that argument is the assumption that what’s going on in Iraq now is a short-term spike. When do you anticipate there can be substantial reductions in American forces there, particularly since this all seems to depend on handing—or much of it anyway—on handing over more responsibilities to the Iraqis, like the Iraqis who just had such a difficult time in Fallujah? When can we look for these sorts of reductions, and when is this spike—when are we on the descending end of this spike?
PACE: The spike came a few months back when we were up about 150,000. It’s about 120,000 now. It’s going down to about 110 [thousand troops]. I do not know when we’ll be able to change to 110 [thousand troops]. John Abizaid, General John Abizaid, who is the commander [of U.S. forces] there, will tell the secretary and the president when he’s comfortable that we can change the size of the force. But I am comfortable that, should the current force need to stay there for some period of time into the future, we have sufficient forces on active duty and Reserves to continue to resource that. And that number will change sooner than we could build the force—even if we wanted to build it—which I have never recommended.
GORDON: I’m going to ask you a question and then open it up to our audience here, because I know there are probably very good questions here in the audience, and a lot of expert people.
In October, thanks to the reporting of USA Today, there was an account of a memo from Defense Secretary [Donald] Rumsfeld, which is addressed to just four people of whom you are one, and Secretary Rumsfeld later spoke publicly about this and explained it, so it’s not—it’s hardly a secret. But it was a provocative memo on—the subject was the global war on terrorism. And in this memo Rumsfeld said that the Pentagon has been organized and trained and equipped to fight with big armies, and it’s not possible to change this big organization fast enough to adjust to the terrorist tactics. And he asked, “Does DOD [Department of Defense] need to think through new ways to organize, train, equip and focus and deal with the global war on terror? Are the changes we’re making too modest and incremental?”
And then he asserts: “Today, we lack the metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror. Do we need a new organization?” This is sort of a think piece meant to provoke responses. But it’s presented in the context where something urgent is required. It isn’t time to work through all the bureaucratic changes at DOD. Something new has to come forth. That was October 16th. What’s happened?
PACE: Well, first of all, you have to understand the secretary in that he is very, very good at questioning the status quo. He’s very good especially when things are going well to ask, “Are we ready for what’s coming next?” And he sends memos like that to the four of us frequently about various topics, saying we have the responsibility to think ahead, and are we thinking about these kinds of things? So the fact that that memo got out—it was unfortunate the way it got out, but as far as I’m concerned the topics that were covered in that memo clearly show that the secretary has us focused on the right things and he’s asking the right questions.
And a lot of things have happened since October to take a look at. For example, the Army’s plan to restructure itself has taken place since that memo came out. And it is a way, as I said, to go literally to add the equivalent of three more active infantry divisions to the armed forces of the United States without adding a single individual, by taking today’s Army, restructuring it and coming up with 10 additional brigades, which is three divisions plus one brigade—10 additional brigades of U.S. Army infantry out of the current force. Those kinds of things go on all the time, and they go on because there’s a lot of good people in the building thinking, and because the secretary’s prods us and says, “You know, we have this responsibility. Are we doing our job? Are we thinking ahead? Are we on top of this? Are we thinking fast enough? What else should we be doing?”
GORDON: I think his most famous assertion was that the DOD lacked metrics—a measure to judge whether it was winning or losing the war on terror. What are the metrics?
PACE: There’s a lot of metrics we use, both in Afghanistan and in Iraq. Some have to do with governance. Some have to do with the economy. Some have to do with security. Some have to do with basic essential services. So the whole range of things that we track to see: are we headed in the direction we should be going? Are things getting better in Afghanistan? Are things getting better in Iraq? And the answer is yes, they are.
GORDON: At this point—I’m not going to monopolize things for sure—and I’d like to open it up for questions from the audience. And I guess, state your name, affiliation if you have one, and make your question as straightforward as you can. We’ll start here and then we’ll go back there. Go ahead, Dan Schorr.
QUESTIONER: Dan Schorr with National Public Radio. On June 30th, sovereignty is to be transferred to the Iraqis. Can you tell a little bit about what will then be the status of the American forces and American coalition forces, American and British forces there, how you will relate to this interim government that is to be formed? Will you accept its dictates? If you are no longer occupiers, what then are you in relation to the Iraqi government?
PACE: First of all, the U.S. government will be represented by a U.S. ambassador and a normal country team like we have in any country.
Second, the exact authorities of the coalition forces that will remain at the request of the Iraqi government are still being worked out. As I understand the current discussions, the Iraqi Governing Council is very desirous of having coalition forces remain after 30 June at their— the Iraqi Governing Council’s request. So they have made that very clear that they understand that. Although they have many police and infrastructure security, and border guards in training, they still have a ways to go before they will be able to be self-sustaining in the security mode.
Currently we are working under U.N. Resolution 1511 which provides the authorities [to], and the protections for, the U.S. service members, among others, to be able to operate in the international arena—that is, Iraq. And right now the discussion between the United Nations and the Iraqi Governing Council and the coalition is very much along the lines of finding a way to sustain the ability of the coalition forces to hunt down, track down, fight the terrorists; to assist the Iraqi government in providing security beyond what its own police and the like can do internally; and then to work toward a future that allows the Iraqi security forces to take on more and more of the responsibilities, as they are capable of doing. So we’ll be helping them with the training and equipping and tactics and techniques and procedures in those kinds of things. Sir?
GORDON: That’s my job. Go ahead.
QUESTIONER: You can call me sir, Michael. Judith Kipper, Council on Foreign Relations. General Pace, I’d like to ask you how and why the decision was made to instantly dismiss the Iraqi Army in light of the following: the Iraqi Army was always a force that Saddam and his regime never trusted. They were professional soldiers, as we saw in the earlier Gulf War, 1990-91. Had we called them back to barracks, given them new uniforms, crisp $100 bills, retrained them for a week or two, we would have had a guard force of the borders, the pipelines, the mosques, the CPA [Coalition Provisional Authority], et cetera, et cetera. It seems to me that we got ourselves in trouble first and foremost because of this unfortunate decision, and I’d like to know how the military participated, if they did, in that decision.
PACE: I do not know the discussions that took place in theater on when or how to disband the Iraqi military. I do know that that decision was made, and that based on that, then we started recruiting volunteers from those individuals who had at one time been part of about a 400,000-man army that they had then and had been recruited into the police, the infrastructure security, the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps—which is like a homeland security group—and the border guards. So I was not privy to those discussions. I cannot answer you specifically on that. I just know that, as a result of that, the individuals who became the pool from which we recruited the new security forces were primarily the old Iraqi Army. And sorting through who the Baathists were and are, who was really a card-carrying member because they wanted to be, and who was card-carrying because they needed to be—all that, I am sure, on the ground, was very difficult to work through. And it’s still being worked through.
GORDON: I think that Judith Kipper’s question is an interesting one because—if I can interject a bit—because that wasn’t initially what happened in Baghdad. I remember being there then. That was a decision made under tenure of Mr. [L. Paul] Bremer [chief administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority] when he goes there. What was the input or the role of the joint staff and the JCS on this decision? It’s a pretty important one. Did you have any input into this decision?
PACE: No, Ambassador Bremer had the authority to make that decision. I do not know what information he got from those in theater, but he had the authority to make that decision. He did. And we then used those resources to recruit them for the new force.
GORDON: Bremer makes the decision, but I guess the question is, what was your advice to him institutionally on that?
PACE: I did not have any—I did not give him advice. I advise the secretary of defense, and I advise the president of the United States when he asks. I’m not an advisor to Mr. Bremer.
GORDON: But what was the position of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on that issue, whether to Mr. Rumsfeld or whomever?
PACE: That issue was not specifically addressed by the Joint Chiefs, brought to the Joint Chiefs. The folks in theater, between Mr. Bremer and—I believe at the time it was still General [Tommy] Franks [Commander, U.S. Central Command, 2001-03]. They worked together as a team over there. And then General Abizaid came over to team up with Mr. Bremer. And that’s the discussion that went on between the people in theater as to what they believed, based on what they saw on the ground was correct. And those of us in Washington did not second-guess those who were on point.
GORDON: So you have no input into that?
PACE: We were not asked for a recommendation or for advice.
QUESTIONER: [Inaudible]—Library of Congress. Could you give us some details about the efforts being made to turn the enterprise in Iraq into a NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organization]-led enterprise? Details of whether something like that is happening, and how it is being attempted to attract the Europeans into Iraq? Thank you.
PACE: I need to give you a double answer on that. First of all, NATO has stepped forward in Afghanistan—has taken on the ISAF [International Security Assistance Force] mission in Afghanistan—and is doing that exceptionally well. And that has been very, very helpful to the international community—and certainly to the Afghans—as they have gone about writing their constitution and are going toward elections this June. That’s working very, very well. I know that NATO countries are discussing what is an appropriate role for NATO right now. To my knowledge, it is still very much at the discussion level amongst the various member nations. I am not aware of any particular specific thrust or recommendation or vote that has taken place yet on what NATO might or might not do long-term in Iraq.
Having said that, NATO has certainly stood up and said several months ago when the Polish leadership took on the responsibility to lead one of the multinational divisions—NATO did in fact then say that NATO would support Poland as it stood up to the leadership responsibility of leading that division.
QUESTIONER: Sherri Goodman, the Center for Naval Analysis Corporation. General Pace, you’ve explained that the metrics for success for the military operations in Iraq are primarily non-military in terms of the success of the economy, civil society and the like. Do you believe that this is likely to continue to be the case for future military operations? And, if so, what other force structure changes do you foresee for our military beyond the innovative changes you described that General Schoomaker is in the process of making?
PACE: Thanks very much. And thanks for letting me clarify, because it’s critical that the military gets the first piece right. You have to have a secure environment. So you’ve got to go in and get that right. If you don’t have a secure environment, all the other things that allow a country to grow its own institutions and to have a better life for its people aren’t going to happen. So if I did say that security—if somehow I implied that security wasn’t critical, it is very critical. It’s that you are not going to have the progress you want, you are not going to have the free nation you need, until all the other things in that secure environment have a chance to grow and prosper, and the Constitution gets written and the like.
As you look out to the future of our armed forces, and you see the kinds of skills that we have not had resident in our active force—meaning we have had to rely on the Reserves—we have learned that we need to take some of our combat support, combat service support—logistics and maintenance and the like—and move more of that out of our Guard and Reserve into the active force. Now, the force we have today is the force that was consciously decided we wanted about 30 years ago. And over those decades we have proposed, and Congress has funded, to buy a certain type of force, which relied very heavily on the Guard and Reserve to be able to go to war and to be able to sustain war. As you look at the battle that we had in Afghanistan and the battle that we had in Iraq, and you see how far we have come on the pure combat side of the house, with precision weapons and speed of employment, and how quickly we have been able to accomplish the major military muscle movements, and then you look at the stability operations that then follow, you see that a lot of the skills that are currently resident in the Guard and Reserve need to migrate, at least in part, over into the active force. So we have identified about—we meaning the services—have identified about 100,000 jobs that currently reside either in the active force or in the Reserve force and need to switch places. So without making the Guard and the Reserve any bigger or smaller, without making the active force any bigger or smaller, but simply by switching positions—examples: take some artillery out of the active force and put it in Reserves; take some civil affairs folks out of Reserves and put them in the active force, as examples—you can have a better balanced force for the kinds of capabilities that, as you look out five, ten, fifteen years, we think we’re going to need more of if we have to go do these kinds of things for our country.
There’s a lot of that going on—war games, table-top discussions where you sit down and talk through. If you have to go here in the world and do this, what does that mean? What kind of capabilities do you need? What do we have now? What do we have programmed already in the budgets that have been approved? Where are the gaps and how do you fill those gaps? There’s a lot of that kind of thinking going on right now in [Washington] D.C. and in the combatant command headquarters around the world. So we can tell ourselves where we are now, where we need to be, and make the right decisions to change into that new force. Thanks.
GORDON: Let’s go here and then we’ll go back there.
QUESTIONER: Joe Grimes. I talked to you a little before about my time back at the Navy Department many years ago. You talked about the changes—
PACE: You still have a halo around you, sir. Just like you did when I was a captain.
QUESTIONER: You talked about the changes in the thinking in the military. One of the things that people always thought about as being distinctive about the Marines was the ability to make amphibious landings. And I was very involved in the whole Vieques [Puerto Rico] issue and the Claiborne [firing range] issue at one time. Marines really kind of lost interest in amphibious landings, and you don’t do those as much anymore—certainly you didn’t in Afghanistan, you haven’t in Iraq. Are you more now into the deep thrust of the lightly-armed force, something in between the Army Special Forces and the full Army? What kind of thinking are you going to have? Are you going to have any kind of amphibious capability in the future, or is it going to be an entirely different force structure for the Marines?
PACE: Sure, thanks. You know this, but for those who may not know the difference, an amphibious operation and coming from the sea are two very distinct things. And most people think of an amphibious operation as something they saw in a World War II flick, where there were lots and lots of ships, and people going ashore, and “Saving Private Ryan” type movies that were very accurate, but show a type of warfare that we don’t have to engage in now.
That does not mean that coming from the sea is not important. It is critically important. Being sea-based allows you to go where you need to go when you need to go, loiter as long as you want, be in international waters, and not have to get anybody’s permission to do what it is that you need to do for your country. Comes the time to go ashore, now the new technology will allow us, instead of having to go directly in, literally inside of a 24-hour period, to be going ashore 500 miles south or 500 miles north of where your ships happen to be, going deep a couple hundred miles. So you no longer have to fight your way through the very strong defenses on the beach. You can go around them. You can go over them literally. So amphibious landing, which has been immortalized by movies and was part of our very rich heritage, is no longer required. But from the sea and sea-basing, in my opinion, not just as a Marine but as a vice chairman, is going to have greater significance to our country in the future than it has in the past, because of our capacity to use the seas, to come from the sea, to fly from the sea, to assault from the sea, and to provide humanitarian assistance and support from the sea.
GORDON: Okay, we’ll go there and then we’ll move back. I can’t see so well with the lights, but go ahead.
QUESTIONER: General Pace, Murrey Marder of the Nieman Foundation of Journalism at Harvard. Under the Bush Doctrine, the president is given—is authorized—command authority to launch either preventive or preemptive war. During World War II against the Soviet Union for 40 years, would you have favored advocating giving such power to the commander in chief?
PACE: Is that your question, sir?
QUESTIONER: I beg your pardon?
PACE: I just wanted to make sure you were done.
QUESTIONER: Yes, sir.
PACE: I will not deal in hypotheticals. I will tell you this: We are a nation at war. We have been a nation at war since before September 11th, 2001. We realized it on September 11th, 2001. The Congress of the United States and our elected representatives and our elected leadership will decide what power is given or not given to various branches of our government. As a military man, I know that my nation has been at war at least since 11 September 2001, and we are going to take this fight to our enemies, and we are going to win this battle, and we will stick with it, because our country does have the will, the patience and the commitment to see this through.
QUESTIONER: That doesn’t answer my question, sir.
PACE: You asked a hypothetical question, sir, and I—
QUESTIONER: No, sir, it’s not hypothetical at all. My question was: Would you have used the authority which this administration claims it has under the Bush Doctrine? Congress did not authorize that authority.
PACE: I don’t understand your question, sir. You’re asking about a World War II scenario?
QUESTIONER: No, no. I’m speaking of the current war. Are you familiar with the Bush Doctrine, sir?
PACE: I prefer you explain it to me, sir, as you understand it.
QUESTIONER: It was issued in September. It’s a revolutionary doctrine. Is the military not following out the president’s doctrine?
PACE: The military is following the commander in chief’s orders.
QUESTIONER: I beg your pardon?
PACE: Your military is carrying out the commander in chief’s orders. I am afraid I don’t—we’re passing each other in the night.
QUESTIONER: I think we are. Let me just try to explain this. In September of last year, the president issued what is called the Bush Doctrine, the American press as a whole massively missed the story. That doesn’t mean that it’s not enacted. It presumably is active. The president’s national security advisor or the defense secretary should be asked, “Is the president’s doctrine operational?”
PACE: I’m not aware of anything being published called the Bush Doctrine.
GORDON: I think you can continue this afterwards. I think you made your point—
PACE: Yeah, I’m sorry, sir—we really are talking past each other. I apologize.
GORDON:—think you could engage the president’s decision. Let’s go back there on the right. Who’s way back there?
QUESTIONER: Thank you. David Bosco with Foreign Policy magazine. I wonder if you could assess the role that’s been played by the United Nations in Iraq, and also by civilian non-governmental organizations. And I guess in addressing the U.N. I don’t so much mean in a political role, but in terms of the relief and development functions of that body. Have you seen adequate civilian involvement in Iraq, and do you believe that civilian military cooperation is proceeding well?
PACE: A little bit out of my lane. I’ll try to answer you as best I can on what I know. But, as you would expect, I’m focused primarily on what the military is doing—very appreciative of what the U.N. is doing right now, especially Mr. [Lakhdar] Brahimi [senior adviser on the United Nations’ role in Iraq’s transition to self rule] who is currently, or at least has recently been in Iraq—I’m not positive he’s still there today or not—working inside Iraq to help determine the best way to have elections so that the Iraqi people can then have their own government take charge. So from that standpoint I know the U.N. and Secretary [General Kofi] Annan is very much involved in a way forward in Iraq.
I also know that non-government organizations—food relief organizations—not connected necessarily with the U.N., have been very helpful inside Iraq since the war,the major combat operations part of the war has completed, in helping to reestablish basic needs of the Iraqi people. To the best of my knowledge, that’s moving forward very, very well. But, as I mentioned before, I believe that, as the security environment continues to improve, more and more civilian organizations, non-government organizations, will have more and more comfort that they can go in and operate inside Iraq and be able to provide the kinds of services that they provide.
GORDON: Let’s go over there, just straight back.
QUESTIONER: General, Mark Mazzetti with U.S. News and World Report. You have emphasized that the United States is a nation at war. But recently on Capitol Hill some members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, whom you consult with a lot, mentioned that they were concerned that with operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the money would run out on September 30th. There wouldn’t be actually a budget request for those operations until January 2005, about four months later. I’m wondering if you share their concern, and wonder if you can explain what the logic is for waiting so long.
PACE: Here’s what I understand the process to be, and that is that when the Department of Defense went to Congress this current year to fund the ongoing operations in the global war on terrorism, that Congress said that it should be part of a supplemental appropriation, not a part of the basic budget. And we were directed in preparing the budget that began 1 October of this past year, the FY ’04 budget, we were directed to only budget for normal ongoing military capacities and training and the like, and that any costs incurred as part of the war would be handled in a supplemental. And the supplementals only go through 30 September. So anything that happens after 1 October of this year and beyond on the global war on terrorism, given the rules that have been laid down for budgeting, say that—at least unless Congress changes what they told us to do—that that would be funded through a supplemental next year.
So what the service chiefs are saying is that, right now, we can only see as far as 30 September, because we don’t yet have a budget that’s approved for 1 October and beyond of this year; nor do we have a supplemental yet submitted, because it’s not next year yet. So the chiefs are simply pointing out what they should point out, which is that you cannot have the normal budget that we have and then run a war like we’re running and not have a supplemental, and that therefore you have to take some money from the end of your budget and move it forward while the process goes on with the Congress to ask for a supplemental to fund the war. It becomes confusing because, unless you work with it everyday, it’s not clear that we’ve been directed to use supplemental money for the war on terrorism. But when you look at it in that regard, you can see that you can’t ask for the supplemental until it comes time for Congress to consider it.
QUESTIONER: Can I just follow that up really quickly? I guess the debate seems to be: why wait three and a half months after you run out of money to ask for more money—why wait till January 2005?
PACE: We should be asking the Congress of the United States for what we need, and we should ask the Congress of the United States for what we need when we know we need it. I can’t tell you sitting here tonight how much money I’m going to need in January next year. I just don’t know. So we’re working off of this supplemental, which takes us through 30 September. As we get closer to that date, we’ll start having a better understanding of what the operation is going to look like into the next fiscal year. But right now that would be a guess.
GORDON: Let’s go way back there, and then we’ll go up here.
QUESTIONER: General, great to see you again. With respect to the statement that we’ve been at war since September 11—and few of us could disagree with that statement—with respect to Iraq and with the benefit of hindsight two and a half years later, from a military perspective can you give us your best judgment as to what, if anything, Iraq had to do with September 11th, and what, as you see things today, was the nature of the military threat Iraq presented to the United States at the time of the invasion?
PACE: I do not know what, if any, direct linkage there is between Iraq and September 11th, 2001. It is absolutely clear to me that if we learned nothing else, if history were to stop right now and all we knew about the regime in Iraq is what we know right now, that that was exactly the right thing for us to take on as a nation. That that regime that terrorized its own people, murdered its own people, mass graves, gassed its own people, gassed its neighbors, and had programs to develop WMD [weapons of mass destruction], and wanted us to believe that they had those, and was in violation of 13 or 14 U.N. resolutions—all of that to me is sufficient reason to have done what we did.
QUESTIONER: This may press the question, but could you describe, based on everything you know today—and I’m not asking to take you back to what we thought at the time—what today from a military perspective would you describe as the nature of the military threat Iraq presented to the United States at the time of the invasion?
PACE: We had a regime in power that had done all the things that I told you about, which I will not repeat, plus it had certainly in the northeast corner a lab that was producing poisons. It had all of the capabilities to be a threat to us militarily, and one has to make a determination as to whether or not that is a threat and whether or not you are willing to wait and bet your country’s future on September 12th, 13th or 14th of a year yet in the future. So I am very comfortable that we did the correct thing militarily by defeating a threat to our own country and certainly by defeating a tyrant who had already committed mass murder on a scale that is disgusting inside of his own country and with his neighbors. So no matter which way I look at it personally, I am comfortable with my children and yours and our grandchildren that we did the right thing.
QUESTIONER: General, are you saying that your view is that Iraq was not an immediate threat, but a potential threat?
PACE: I didn’t say that.
QUESTIONER: I’m asking if that is your view.
PACE: No, I think—in my—when we went to war with Iraq, in my mind then, in my mind now, they were an immediate threat to the United States of America.
GORDON: We’re going to go up there for a question right here. Do you still want to ask a question? And then I’m going to use my prerogative to ask the final question. Right? That’s about how we are doing time-wise.
QUESTIONER: Dave Perera from Inside the Pentagon. I wonder if I could ask actually two. The first one is my understanding that, following Vietnam, one of the reasons why a lot of the combat support functions were shifted into the Reserves and the Guards was that the military wanted to assure that it couldn’t go to war without the support of the American people. Of course, if combat support is in Reserves and Guard, then you need their explicit vote of confidence. So, as the military transforms, is that something that is worrying this shift of functions back into the active force?
GORDON: Why don’t you make that your only question, because I think we’re pretty much at time.
PACE: As I understand it, and as I recall it, it was not that the U.S. military after Vietnam wanted to assure. It was that the elected leaders of our government decided that they wanted their armed forces to be constructed in a certain way, and they wanted a United States Marine Corps that could go to combat tonight, tomorrow or the next day, without having to get any reinforcements from anybody—just get out of town and take the fight to our nation’s enemies. And they decided they wanted a United States Army that, to get into battle and be sustained, had to call up Reserves and had to call up Guards. Those are political decisions, rightfully, correctly made by our elected leaders. And the military crafted a military force that could do that—a Marine Corps that could get up and go right away and an Army that needed to call up Reserves and Guard. That’s what the nation wanted. That’s what made sense for that time.
As we look to the future, our elected leaders are saying—correctly so—that our armed forces need to be better positioned to go to war for a sustained period of time without having to call up the Guard and Reserve. As a result of that guidance and leadership from our commander in chief on down, we are in fact crafting the armed forces that will allow us to do the missions that our country wants us to perform as our elected leaders described them for us. So that’s the transition that is going on. Let me quickly add, I agree with that analysis. Part of my responsibility is to give my best military advice, so when I get a chance to give my best military advice, that is exactly what I have been saying. We need to take a look at what we have been doing for the last two years, and we have been relying very heavily on the Guard and Reserve, and they deserve tremendous credit. God bless them. They are wonderful Americans, and they have served this country exceptionally well.
The question is, as you look to the future, are you going to need those skills that they have right now? And the answer is yes, you will. And if you know that today, that it is more likely than not that you will need those skills, then you ought to have those skills in your active component, and you ought to rely on your Reserve and your Guard to do the Reserve and Guard type missions, to come forward when the normal pace of things is greater than your active force. Right now the normal pace of things is calling on the Guard and Reserve. We should not rely on them for what turns out to be day-in-day-out, month-in-month-out activities. We should rely on them to help us with the spikes. And the active force should be able to handle the plateau. And what I’m saying is that the plateau has changed, and we need to change our active force to handle that new plateau so that when the spike comes we have a properly configured Guard and Reserve.
GORDON: I think you’d agree that General Pace has been very gracious in handling a wide range of questions, and persistent questions and argumentative questions, and he’s done it with a lot of tact. I’d like to ask a final question, an easy question, since you had so many hard questions. There—and you refer to the commander in chief. We’ve had commanders of chief in our history who have had no military experience, commanders during wartime—[President] Franklin Roosevelt. We’ve had commanders in chief who have been generals, like President [Dwight D.] Eisenhower. Do you think that it’s an important attribute for a commander in chief to have military experience, or do you think he can simply rely on advisors? And do you think the quality of that military experience is relevant, or is it not important if he relies on the right people?
PACE: And what part of that was the easy part? (Laughter.) I will tell you this, and I mean this in absolute candor and with as much honesty as I can come up with at this instant. (Laughter.) The commander in chief, regardless of what prior service or non-prior service he has, starts active duty the day he takes the oath as president. And for however many number of years he is our commander in chief, he is on active duty with your armed forces. It makes no difference to guys like me whether he has had 10 years of experience or no years of experience. When he becomes commander in chief, he has the unbelievable responsibility of protecting this country. He has the absolute loyalty of all the armed forces of the United States from the day—the instant he swears himself in—he swears in as president of the United States and takes that oath as our commander in chief. And he accumulates active duty time every day he’s our president. And whether that’s four years or eight years as president, regardless of who the president is, that’s what counts. And what came before is of interest, but it has nothing to do with who the commander in chief is and who the president is, and the loyalty he deserves and gets and will always have from your armed forces.
GORDON: Okay. I thank you for that answer as we close the meeting. (Applause.)
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