Continuing on from the last post. The following is an excerpt from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Thursday Jan 11 2007, the day after Bush announced his new Iraq initiative and the imminent deployment of 21,500 more troops overseas. This is the entirety of Sen. Bill Nelson's (D-Florida) question and answer with the Secretary.
[Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Florida)]
Madame Secretary, I have supported you and the administration on the war, and I cannot continue to support the administration's position. I have not been told the truth. I have not been told the truth over and over again by administration witnesses, and the American people have not been told the truth. And I don't come to this conclusion very lightly. Does General Abizaid support an increase in troops?
[Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice]
He does.
[Sen. Bill Nelson]
Well, that's at variance, of course, as you've heard.
[Secretary Rice]
I think Senator, he, first of all, if you look at his testimony, and you look at the next lines of his testimony, he talks about the conditions under which troops might be useful. And in fact, everybody had hoped this would be done with Iraqi forces. It wasn't that we didn't need more forces, it was hoped that we do it with Iraqi forces. And what the Baghdad security plan of the summer showed was that that wasn't possible. Gen. Abizaid and Gen. Casey have been involved in the development of this plan and it is in fact Gen. Casey who presented this option to the president.
[Sen. Bill Nelson]
Well I am looking forward to talking to Gen. Abizaid. He is one of the few that have come before a number of the committees that I have the privilege of sitting on, that I feel like has been a straight shooter. And it's my hope that Chairman Carl Levin will call him and I will ask him directly. But of course I was one of the ones that asked him that question very specifically when he was last here in front of the Congress. And he is someone that I think has credibility but, sad to say, he is one of the few that I felt like I was getting the straight story from.
Let me pick up on something Sen. Coleman said. Three weeks ago we were in Iraq, and our mouths about dropped open when the national security advisor Dr. Rubai [Iraqi interim government National Security Adviser Dr. Muaffaq al-Rubai] said, and I think it's almost his direct quote, this is not a sectarian war. And he went on to talk about how it's extremists, al-Qaeda, and how it's the Ba'thists that want to come back into power. And of course that's part of it. But the two of us, certainly this Senator, got the impression, that they are not coming to grips with what they have to come with. And that is, that you've got Sunnis on Shiites, and Shiites on Shiites, and Sunnis on Sunnis. And until you get to that problem being solved, it's just simply not going to work.
Now I'll tell you one place that I agree with a statement of the President last night. That he was going to send additional troops into Anbar province. I was convinced by the Marine commanders there, as I think Sen. Colewell was as well, that there where you have just a Sunni population, and that the enemy is al-Qaeda, that working with those Sunni tribal leaders with additional American troops, that you can get some progress. But not so in Baghdad. And I'm sad that we've come to this point.
Let me just conclude by asking you. I think it's been said by a number here, and I would like for you to amplify: obviously we need an intense diplomatic effort in the region. One of the points of my trip was at the request of General Hayden to go and talk with the Saudi King, urging them to use their tribal contacts in Iraq to try to get people to come together. Could you outline for the committee, what is the intense diplomatic effort that is going to be taken, and is it being taken simultaneously with the President's plan of the additional troops?
[Secretary Rice]
Senator, it is being taken. I will go out tomorrow night. The group that we are engaging in addition to all the many bilateral engagements we have with the Saudis, with the Kuwaiti's, with the others who can help, the Jordanians, who can help, is through a group called the GCC+2,that is really the appropriate group. We work also with Turkey, very closely on Iraq. We have a problem on the Northern border with the PKK, that Gen. Ralston is trying to resolve.
But I think you would find that first of all there already has been diplomatic effort. We will of course try to intensify that effort to support what the Maliki government is now trying to do to get its sectarian problem under control. Frankly the countries of the region are also watching to see whether this will be an even-handed government in dealing with both Sunnis and Shia. And so, the Maliki government faces, I think, some skepticism not just from Americans and from Iraqis, but also from the region. And we've made that point to them, that they really must deal with the sectarian problem in an even-handed fashion or they are not going to get support from the region.
That said, to the degree that we hear from the Saudis and others their biggest strategic concern is Iran, then they have a very strong incentive to stabilize Iraq so that Iraq is indeed a barrier to Iranian influence in the region, not a bridge.
[Sen. Biden, as the time remaining is 30 seconds]
Quick question please.
[Sen. Bill Nelson]
We need more than engagement. We need to get these countries to act. So how do you get them to act?
[Secretary Rice]
There is an international compact that they've all negotiated. We need to finalize it.
