mater dan 1 terence incessanting of what a massive assault I STEDET Fins a de tears of great cities feels like. We CLW VOR I Smels be. The turners of that day have made AmerDUS DATE Tist na thers around the world, who like so DARY VEL-Dearning Jerze i de story just passed, would prefer Das Ter FE EI TEEt ma a metal threat does not exist. Acercars Dave 2011 ce ne iz seeing things more ter Da me ne iz I tersire me you to support a resoluwe grang de Present me conduct a campaign unei i te verw if he Santam Hussein regime; that you 31 TK sumurs, EL DE TIC not condition our action I IN ATISSE I ZES THE DAY wish to prevent us from

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Me de 15 SILET STR. & point, Saddam has to LOW DA ME are maning Bygg the President discretion to tep zum Keve some neustre if ceramical surprise, which will NOTICE I Krins mass of any and complete success, you TEN DUTE moray recore the casualties that our young men and women i mörn To sufer.

Let me conduce v re as it is in the nature of parDSET POLDUS 2 starpen oferences between parties even on matwrs of tram pay Te ir a vaney of reasons there has been & COMMON POLL fra decade, from the end of the first Gulf War to the present. Bech Democratic and Republican adminismazons pot IWIT ORe wonnent and deterrence. That poler has finally filed for meget, American leaders have shared an understanding of the mate issues. Again, let me quote President Clinton. The band fact is that so long as Saddam remains in power, be threatens the well-being of his people, the peace of his region de senty of the world. The best way to end Phat threat once and for as with a new Iraqi government, a government ready to live in peace with its neighbors, a government that respects the rights of its people".

However, one judges the success of his administration's policies, it seems to me that President Clinton had the assessment right, and that the time has come to act on his words.

Mr. WELDON, Thank you. Dr. Cohen.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Cohen can be found in the Appendix on page 409)

Mr. WELDON. Dr. O'Hanlon, welcome. Your statement will be entered in the record. And you may take whatever time you would like for your public comments.

STATEMENT OF DR. MICHAEL O'HANLON, SENIOR FELLOW, THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION

Dr. O'HANLON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is a great honor to be here before the committee and to be appearing with Eliot Cohen, who has made a lot of excellent points. I would like to agree with some of what he said, much of what he said, but also emphasize the possibility that I think a strategy of containment can work if we get rigorous inspections and disarmament going again inside of And in that spirit I would like to support strongly the Sepber 12th U.N. speech, which I think had the tone and the strat

egy just right, even though I am not convinced that the resolution suggested by the President thereafter had the same tone.

And I hope the Congress will hold the President to the September 12th speech strategy not necessarily with binding stipulations, but with a strong sense of encouragement that a multilateral ultimatum with tough deadlines and trying to use inspections and disarmament if possible first is the right way to go, for a number of reasons, and I will get into those.

But, a. I think it can work. I think a toughened up and tightened up containment strategy can work; and, b. if we go to war, we need to go to war with as many allies as possible. It does not make sense, for example, to essentially say we can do this without the Saudis, let's not worry too much about getting them aboard. When you look at the political and military realities of that region, doing this war without Saudi infrastructure and Saudi support is such a way of fighting with one arm behind your back that I think we need to craft a strategy that will maximize the odds of countries like that one being with us, if and when we need to go to war.

So, I strongly support the President's September 12th strategy, because I think that is the way you get the Saudis on board, and others like that, if you need to ultimately use force.

Let me say, I do believe-and I agree with Eliot Cohen-I do believe that we can overthrow Saddam Hussein if necessary at the same time that we continue the operations against al Qaeda. There may be some political strains with certain key allies and maybe some political dangers with countries like Pakistan trying to overcrowd the agenda, but in military terms I strongly agree with that assessment, and I do not believe that we need to wait.

In fact, let me agree further with Eliot on the point that it is very hard to develop a national consensus to go to war. We have all seen that in the recent debate, and this body has been very instrumental in conducting that debate. We know this is not the sort of thing you can turn on and turn off, based on when you decide it is politically opportune.

So, even though I am not convinced that Saddam's overthrow is absolutely as urgent as Eliot has argued, I do believe that now that we are having this debate, let's have it now. We have the military wherewithal to force this to an issue, force this to a head right now if necessary, so for better or worse, let's have it now.

Finally, I think that we also need to remember, however, that even if war might be easy, it also might not be. And the last thing you can assume as an American military planner or a President or a Member of Congress is that this war will be easy. And in this sense I strongly take issue with the tone of several members of the Defense Policy Board, who in almost a quasi-official capacity have been suggesting this war would be a cakewalk, a walk in the park. These are their words, not mine. I think this is an irresponsible way to prepare the country for conflict, and I actually don't believe people associated with the Secretary of Defense should be using this sort of language.

I think if we are going to go into this, we need to recognize this could be tough. Eliot has pointed out how the Iraqi military has deteriorated and also how its morale may be very weak, and how it is essentially a house of cards held together by fear. But there is

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to go after park and take down matary, we generally kill vilians of the other side than military, and that is using the genreful techniques that we have.

This is important, not simply for humanitarian reasons; it is important for political reasons. If we are going to go into this war, we have to be ready for the political fallout of that kind of effect being shown throughout the Arab world. There are going to be thousands of Iraqi innocents dying, and it is going to be shown on Al-Jazeera and CNN, and the whole world is going to see it.

What that means to me is it is one more reason why you have got to go in fast and furiously and big if you are going to do this, because you have got to win this war before that political fallout becomes so strong that you feel like you have to stop or pull back or negotiate for terms.

So, for a number of reasons, the only serious strategy, in my judgment, is to go in big and go in hard, and be ready for casualties, and see simultaneous objectives the way we did in the 1989 invasion of Panama, but on a much broader scale. When you do that, you have to fly low, you have to go inside of cities, and you may actually lose several hundred Americans, possibly even a couple thousand in a reasonable worst case.

The good news is we are not going to have any problem succeeding. I cannot see a way in which Saddam Hussein can stop us militarily. He can try to get Israel to retaliate against a Scud missile strike; he can try to splinter our coalition. That is obviously what he is trying to do right now. But I think militarily speaking, at least, he has no chance, and, therefore, even if this war is difficult, it will be quick, and it will be decisive, but once it is over, it will not be quick or decisive for us to come home. Because-and I will finish with this comment and look forward very much to discussion thereafter-because, if we are going to do this right, I think we have to plan on a ten-year occupation of Iraq, plus or minus, involving anywhere from 10,000 to 50,000 American forces; probably closer to the higher end at first, closer to the lower end over time.

As this committee knows, adding that burden to the current U.S. military workload will be of significant consequence. It may even require us to do certain things like temporarily increasing end strength. The war we can win with 1.4 million people on the active duty force. The occupation may require 1.5 million in the active duty force in order to maintain a rotation basis sufficient for the added people that we will need.

The cost of the war will probably be quite reasonable by the scale of the defense budget or the federal budget, and we have seen estimates from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and other places: 30 billion, 40 billion, 50 billion. I think that general vicinity is probably about right. But, the long-term occupation costs per year could be 5-, 10-, 15-, 20 billion over an extended period of time, not so expensive that it should overwhelm other strategic arguments about this conflict, but expensive enough that we should take notice and recognize the consequences.

I said I was going to finish with that point, Mr. Chairman. Let me add one more point, if you don't mind, because I think it is critical to my original argument that we can accept some kind of a containment of Saddam Hussein, even if-if he does accept these resolutions, I think that containment with disarmament will work. The reason why I think that-Eliot has pointed out various reasons why Saddam Hussein is not always strictly predictable or

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