STATEMENT OF LT. GEN. THOMAS G. MCINERNEY, USAF (RET.), FORMER ASSISTANT VICE CHIEF OF STAFF, UNITED STATES AIR FORCE

General MCINERNEY. Mr. Chairman and members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, thank you for this special opportunity to discuss a war of liberation to remove Saddam's regime from Iraq.

I will not dwell on the reasons why he should be removed. Suffice it to say the President is correct, we must remove threats such as those posed by Saddam Hussein, al Qaeda, and other terrorist groups. We face an enemy that makes its principal strategy the targeting of civilians and non-military assets. We should not wait to be attacked with weapons of mass destruction. We have not only the right, but the obligation to defend ourselves by removing these threats. Iraq is part of the war on terrorism and should be treated as such.

I will now focus on the way to do it very expeditiously with minimum loss of life to both the coalition forces and the Iraqi military and people themselves, and at the same time maintaining a relatively small footprint in the region. Access is an important issue, and we want to minimize the political impact on our allies adjacent to Iraq that are supporting the coalition forces.

Our immediate objective will be the following: Help the Iraqi people liberate Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein and his regime; eliminate weapons of mass destruction and production facilities; complete military operations as soon as possible; protect economic and infrastructure targets; identify and terminate terrorism connections; and establish an interim government as soon as possible. Our longer-term objectives will be to bring a democratic government to Iraq using our post-World War II experiences with Germany, Japan, and Italy that will influence the region significantly. Now I would like to broadly discuss the combined campaign to achieve these objectives, using what I will call "blitz warfare," to simplify the discussion. Blitz warfare is an intensive 24-7 precision air-centric campaign supported by fast-moving ground forces composed of a mixture of heavy, light, airborne, amphibious, special, covert operations working with opposition forces that will all use effect-based operations for their target set and correlate their timing forces for a devastating, violent impact.

This precision air campaign is characterized by many precision weapons, over 90 percent, using our latest command and control, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance assets, Joint STARS, Global Hawk, Predator, human intelligence, signals intelligence, et cetera, in a network-centric configuration to achieve less than 10 minutes for time-critical targeting using the global-strike task force and naval strike forces composed of over 1,000 land- and sea-based aircraft, plus a wide array of air- and sea-launched cruise missiles. This will be the most massive precision air campaign in history, achieving rapid dominance in the first 72 hours of combat, focused on regime-change targets. These are defined as targets critical to Saddam's control-for example, his command and control and intelligence, integrated air defense system, weapons of mass destruction, palaces, and locations that harbor his leadership, plus those military units that resist or fight our coalition forces.

All the military forces will be told, through the opposition forces and their information operations campaign, that they have two choices either help us change the regime leadership and build a democracy, or be destroyed.

In addition, commanders and men in weapons of mass destruction units will be told that they will be tried as war criminals if they use their weapons against coalition forces and other nations. In a multidirectional campaign, coalition forces will seize Basra, Mosul, and most of the oil fields, neutralize selected cores of Iraqi armies, and destroy the integrated air defense zone, command and control, weapons of mass destruction, and Iraqi air forces using stealth, SAM suppression, and air superiority assets. This will enable coalition forces to achieve 24-7 air dominance quickly-I believe within 24 hours-which is critical to our success. Expansion of our beach heads in the north, south, east, and west regions and the air heads seized with alarming speed, will allow the opposition forces to play a very significant role and decisively important role with our special covert operations and the Iraqi army air force.

To determine the status, whether friend or foe, or if they disarm themselves politically, that is their decision. The opposition forces will communicate with the military intensively to neutralize them, and also the Iraqi people, letting them know that they are liberating them from 22 years of oppression, and they are now controlling large amounts of territory. Humanitarian missions will be accomplished simultaneously with leaflet drops, et cetera: "U.S. and other coalition forces are helping us to liberate and change the regime. You, the Iraqi people, must help us to do this quickly with minimum loss of life."

This information operations campaign must be well planned and executed working closely with the opposition forces. This means that the administration must move very quickly now to solidify the opposition forces and set up a shadow government with aggressive assistance and leadership from the United States. I cannot overemphasize that this is about liberating the Iraqi people. This is not an invasion by U.S. and coalition forces. It is an enabling force.

In summary, the Iraqi forces we are facing are about 30 percent of those we saw in Operation Desert Storm, with no modernization. Most of the army does not want to fight for Saddam, and the people want a regime change. We are already seeing increasing desertions from the regular army as well as the Republican Guard. Let's help them to make this change and liberate Iraq from this oppres

sor.

President Bush has accurately said, "Inaction is not an option." I am in support of this position. I also support an international coalition to include the United Nations, if they will be part of the efforts to remove this regime and his weapons of mass destruction. However, realistically, I have no confidence in Iraq allowing U.N. weapons inspectors to operate there in a satisfactory manner.

Time is not on our side. Consequently, I urge Congress to approve the President's draft resolution that was submitted last week as soon as possible.

Mr. Chairman and members, again, my thanks. I await your questions.

Chairman LEVIN. General McInerney, thank you very much.

Let's start with a first round of 6 minutes. At least three of you placed high value on having a U.N. resolution to force inspections with a ultimatum backed up by force, authorization of force by member states if the ultimatum for open inspections is not complied with. You made reference to it at the end of your statement, General McInerney, but I think our other three witnesses placed a great emphasis on the power of a U.N. resolution-I believe, to use your words, General Shalikashvili, that it would be a powerful

message.

So I'd like to focus on the three of you who emphasize on that particularly. Would a U.N. mandate resolution authorizing force and authorizing member states to use force if inspections that are unconditional are not allowed, followed by disarmament-what specifically are the values-be more precise, militarily, politically, or otherwise-in such a resolution to be achieved? Would such a resolution not only have a better chance of enforcing the inspections in the disarmament without a war, but would it also, if it is obtainable, have less risks to our long-term interest than would unilateral U.S. military action without such a resolution?

General Shalikashvili, let me start with you.

General SHALIKASHVILI. Mr. Chairman, I am convinced that such a resolution would, in fact, be a very powerful tool, and I say that for a number of reasons.

First of all, we need to impress upon Saddam Hussein that he's not just facing the United States, but that he's facing the will of the majority of the world. We must also ensure that we have made it possible for as many of our friends and allies to join us, some of whom privately tell us they would do so, but that it's very difficult to do so for political, internal reasons, whatever, without the United Nations having spoken on this issue. Some of them believe deeply that unless you're directly attacked, that you should go to war only with the sanction of the United Nations. Others just have that in their culture.

Finally, I think it's important from a security point of view, because every time we undermine the credibility of the United Nations, we are probably hurting ourselves more than anybody else. We are a global nation with global interests, and undermining the credibility of the United Nations does very little to help provide stability and security and safety to the rest of the world where we have to operate for economic reasons, political reasons, and whatnot.

I said at the beginning of this part of my statement that we must, under no circumstances, ever create the impression that the United States is not free to go to war to protect our interests whenever the President so decides. But that is very different than not trying to achieve the kind of resolution that, in this case, we want, because I think it would make our job easier, it would help the United Nations in the future, and, thus, help us in the future, and it would surely have an impact on how Saddam Hussein reacts to the current resolutions that dictate that inspections and inspectors go back into Iraq.

So I see nothing but value added for the United States to try our very best to get that kind of a resolution.

Chairman LEVIN. Thank you very much.

General Clark.

General CLARK. Mr. Chairman, at the end of World War II, when the United States had a nuclear weapons monopoly and when our gross domestic product was 50 percent of the world's production, President Roosevelt, and later President Truman, recognized that even with that strength, the United States, by itself, wasn't strong enough, wasn't capable of handling all of the world's problems in assuring peace and stability by itself. So they sought to create an institution which would be better than the defunct League of Nations, and they built the United Nations.

President Truman said that the method of the United Nations should be that right makes might. We've spent the 57 years since then trying to develop international institutions that would help strengthen America and help protect our interests as well as the interests of people around the world, but we recognized that a world in which nations are only regulated and guided unilaterally in seeking their self interest is not a world that's in our best advantage.

So, for that reason, I think it's very important, not only that we've gone to the United Nations, but that we do everything we possibly can do to strengthen the United Nations to stand up to this challenge to make itself an effective organization, to be able to cope with the challenge of Saddam Hussein's defiance of its resolutions.

Beyond the issue of the United Nations and the international institutions we seek to live in, I think going to the United Nations has another very important benefit. In the long-run, we're going to have to live with the people in the Middle East. They're our neighbors. They're just like us. Many of them have the same hopes and dreams. The more we can do to diffuse the perception that America is acting alone, America is striking out, America is belligerent, America is acting without allies-the more we can do to diffuse that, the more we can do to put that in the context of international institutions and the support of the governments in the region, the greater chance we have of reducing the recruiting draw of al Qaeda, following through with a successful post-conflict operation in Iraq, promoting a resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict, and promoting peaceful democratization in a number of moderate Arab governments. So I think the long-term benefits of operating through the United Nations are very high.

Finally, there's an immediate short-term benefit. It'll be very useful to us to have allies. Many nations in that region want us to go through the United Nations or be empowered by a United Nations resolution. So I think if we can get that resolution, it's to our near-term military advantage, and our long-term advantage as a nation.

Chairman LEVIN. If you could just very briefly, General Hoar, because I'm out of time, give us your thoughts?

General HOAR. Yes, sir. First of all, I absolutely endorse the statements of my two colleagues.

I would say, first of all, with respect to the U.N., the U.N. is us. It's not them. It's us. We are dues-paying members. When we provide the leadership, as the President did recently, we can see immediately what changes take place. The French haven't changed

their idea of how this ought to be done. If you get a U.N. Security Council resolution, they'll be with us. Many of the other Europeans feel the same way.

Since September 11, I've traveled to the Middle East five times. I've been directly involved with the Middle East for the last 15 years. While we've been paying attention, understandably, to the terrorist attack against the United States, in the Arab countries there is major consternation about what is going on in the West Bank and in Gaza. The Arab countries, while they are supporting us in private, have a serious problem in convincing their populations that this is the right thing to do. So I believe that we have to give them top cover, as well, and we will do that with the United Nations.

On an operational level, I would just point out that, for example, if you can't bring Saudi Arabia into the coalition to be able to use, at a minimum, air space, but, ideally, air bases as well, the complications associated with carrying out a military campaign grow exponentially.

We need them. We need a broad base. We need it for the political reasons as well as the military reasons that we all understand. It will make the whole job a great deal easier. In the long run, as Wes said, in our relationship with these countries in the future, it will expedite and ease our ability to do business after the military campaign is over.

Chairman LEVIN. Senator Allard.

Senator ALLARD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I think it's commendable that all of you are cautious about the use of force, and I agree with that. The use of force should always be as a last resort. Sometimes there is the first-strike argument that's made out there, and some say that we should never be the first strike. Some are saying, well, we've already been the victims of a first strike in the fact that our friends and allies and ourselves were attacked during the Persian Gulf War, then we had the attack with the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.

Would you all agree that certainly one of our options should be to act unilaterally, if necessary?

General Shalikashvili.

General SHALIKASHVILI. Yes, I clearly agree that, under certain circumstances, we have to act unilaterally. Otherwise, we give the veto power to people who do not have any veto power over our security.

Senator ALLARD. Thank you.

General Clark.

General CLARK. I think that the United States always has the option of acting unilaterally, but I'd say in this case it's a question of what's the sense of urgency here and how soon will we need to act unilaterally. So I think it's very important that we recognize that, so far as any of the information has been presented, as General Hoar has said, there's nothing that indicates that, in the immediate next hours, next days, that there's going to be nucleartipped missiles put on launch pads to go against our forces or our allies in the region. So I think there is, based on all of the evidence available, sufficient time to work through the diplomacy of this. Senator ALLARD. General Hoar.