Q: What is the effect of budget deficits on the U.S. military [inaudible], in addition to their commitments in the coming years?
Gen Myers: I can't talk about too far in the future, but talking about the budget that we just have in front of Congress that recognizes all those issues you talked about -- the budget deficit and so forth - the United States military continues to be funded appropriately for what we're asked to do in the world right now. We have a very good budget in front of Congress. The 2006 budget, I think, is $419 billion dollars. And on top of that, for this fiscal year '05, we have another $100 billion dollars in a supplemental that will help us with our operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, the Horn of Africa, and other military operations that we're engaged in that are specifically tied to the war on terrorism.
So we're adequately funded for what we're doing and the future will be what the future will be. I don't know where it's going. I know the U.S. economy is doing very well right now and that will clearly have some impact on the deficit as we go forward.
Q: What is the impact of the military budget cut on the U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Gen Myers: What is the impact?
Q: Yes.
Gen Myers: Our budget has continued to go up. It went up, I think, four percent, five percent, six percent between fiscal year '05 and the '06 budget that's in front of our Congress right now that will go into affect 1 October of this year. That's the start of our fiscal year '06.
So, we've actually had a budget increase. And again, as I said, with those supplementals, we have a growing defense budget. It's one of the sectors in the U.S. budget that has grown despite the other belt tightening that's going on in other departments and agencies of the government. The Department of Defense, and the Department of Homeland Security have actually grown, while other departments have stayed flat or stable.
Q: Let us talk about Afghanistan. Now it's about four years ago from the war, and I'd like to know how you can evaluate the military operations of American troops in Afghanistan especially if you don't find bin Laden and Al Qaeda remains a danger? And also I'd like to know what is the anticipated time for withdrawing from Afghanistan?
Gen Myers: I think the security situation, in fact the overall situation in Afghanistan, is actually very, very good. The security situation is particularly good. There are very few incidents that occur every day. In fact, I get a report every day on events in Afghanistan and, as often as not these days, the report starts out with "nothing significant to report." Now, it is wintertime and wintertime makes it difficult for insurgent groups - or the Taliban or the Al Qaeda - to travel. Nevertheless, we're not seeing high levels of violence inside Afghanistan.
It's very low I think for a couple of reasons. One is, U.S. forces continue to be in the areas where you would expect trouble. Pakistan a year ago had no troops on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Today they have 70,000 forces, roughly, on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. That's very helpful. The Afghan National Army has built up to the point where it is very effective. It goes out on operations all the time. It's well respected by the Afghan people and it's very effective in the field.
And I guess the fourth element would be NATO. As you know, NATO has the responsibility for security around Kabul. They now have the responsibility in the North and they're assuming responsibility out in the West for provincial reconstruction teams, and that will continue. NATO's ambition is to continue down to the South-Southeast. You could see a day in the next year or so where NATO might just be in charge and responsible for all our operations in Afghanistan.
So, from a security standpoint: No, we haven't found Osama bin Laden. We don't even know if he is still in the region. We don't know where he is. But in terms of the Taliban and so forth, Al Qaeda remnants, it's just not much of a threat.
I will mention one other point: The reconciliation. President Karzai is reaching out to Taliban and offering reconciliation for those who don't have a lot of blood on their hands. That seems to be attracting a lot of former Taliban that want to be part of the new Afghanistan.
There was a big change of heart after the elections, the presidential elections, in October of last year. I think the Taliban were very discouraged by that election, by their ability to affect that election, and discouraged by the spirit of the Afghan people towards democracy and towards this new government.
So, I see the security situation as very good right now. It doesn't mean, as the snows melt, that it won't get a little bit worse. Afghanistan is going to have parliamentary elections some time this summer, as scheduled right now, so we'll see what kind of security situation develops.
Q: But this is an expected time for withdrawing?
Gen Myers: The U.S. has three brigades in there right now. NATO has about 7,000 - 8,000 troops in there right now. I think through parliamentary elections, you probably won't see any change. Then after that we'll assess - General Abizaid, the Commander of Central Command, will assess the security situation and, together with our Afghan partners, decide if we're going to come down in strength.
Q: But you will not withdraw without Bin Laden?
Gen Myers: Bin Laden is a separate issue. To go on a manhunt, you don't need three brigades, necessarily. You need very good intelligence, and so the effort against the Al Qaeda leadership will continue no matter how many brigades we have anywhere. It's not entirely separate, but it's almost separate from that.
Q: Okay. General Myers, let me talk to you frankly and especially on the item of Iraq. Of course, you know the negative impression about the American troops in Iraq, for the Egyptian street – for the Arab street. So I'd like to ask you, firstly: the war against Iraq began with the cause that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. Now after two years, you didn't find this type of weapon. Why stay in Iraq now?
Gen Myers: I think the answer is really pretty simple. The Saddam Hussein regime is gone, and I don't know of anybody in this part of the world that would say the Saddam Hussein was a good thing for anybody, particularly Iraqis. There has to be a new government put in place, and that process is going.
The reason that the coalition is in there and the reason that the U.S. troops are in there is to provide to the security so the Iraqi political process and economic development can continue to grow. And I think we saw on 30 January, when they voted, the enthusiasm of the Iraqi citizens for the political process. And I think we'll see, as they draft their constitution and they go to elections at the end of this year under that new constitution that continued enthusiasm for democracy and for a government that considers the needs of all the people of Iraq, not just one particular faction, but all the various groups in Iraq.
We're going to be there only as long as it takes to get Iraqi security forces to the point where they can handle the insurgency themselves. And nobody can know for sure when that's going to be because it's not just up to us and the Iraqis, but also the adversary has some say in this. And the more of the insurgents that decide they want to be part of the political process and not part of violence, then the sooner this can all happen.
But clearly, our goal, the U.S. goal, the coalition goal, is not be in Iraq past the time that Iraqis are capable of dealing with this problem themselves.
Q: I read the declaration in Al Hayat newspaper about two or three weeks ago that you talked about the difficulty of resistance in Iraq, and you said that it may be take more than ten years to overcome it. Does it mean that you will stay more than ten years in Iraq?
Gen Myers: No, I don't know that ten years is right. What I have said before is that, in general, if you look at insurgencies, that the history of insurgencies - some are as short as two or three years, three years; some are as long as eight, nine, or ten years, or twelve years - the average being six or seven years. The only reason I would ever say that is to tell people that we must be prepared in case (of) a long affair. It's not something that is going to be solved overnight. That's the only reason you would ever say something like that, in terms of the length of time. Nobody knows how long it will last in Iraq.
My personal view is that the insurgents in Iraq really have limited capacity. We see what they do on a daily basis, a weekly basis, and they don't seem to have a lot of capacity. We follow the number of attacks per day. They range somewhere between forty and sixty attacks per day.
Q: This is an approximate time for withdrawing from Iraq?
Gen Myers: -- No. Some of them have no effect. In fact, over half of them don't hurt anybody and don't hurt any property. Some of them have a big effect, as we saw the other day in, I think it was Al Hillah, where a hundred and sixty-six Iraqi citizens were killed. And more and more of the attacks are against the Iraqi people themselves: men, women, and children, who are innocent, who are just on the street corner or in the market.
You can't put a timeline on something where you are trying to develop a capacity. This is clearly an issue that Iraqis have to solve, and they're going to solve it themselves. The coalition is there to help them do that as quickly as we possibly can, so we can leave or go wherever the Iraqi government wants us to go.
There should be no mistake: We don't want to be there any longer than we have to be and any longer than it takes to get an Iraqi government that, in terms of the security apparatus, is able to deal with the violence that's currently happening inside Iraq.
Q: General Myers, you declared also for a [Portuguese] newspaper that I read on the Internet that civil war in Iraq is possible. What's the role of the American troops or allied troops in Iraq against that? And do you see that it is assumed that United States didn't take any action to prevent the Iraq’s being divided?
Gen Myers: Let me start at the beginning. First of all, I've never said that I think civil war is possible in Iraq. In fact, just the opposite. In Dick Myers’ opinion, I think it's unlikely that you'll see civil war in Iraq.
Clearly, in the UN mandate and the TAL [Iraqi Transitional Administrative Law]…it talks about (an) Iraq that is not divided, but is whole. That's one of the tenants that's built into all the guidance the international community is providing to the Iraqis. So that it’s a given that it's going to be a whole.
What I see, after the elections of the Transitional National Assembly that occurred on 30 January, I see in every bit of information that I read political jockeying, if you will, political negotiations between all the various factions to determine who's going to be the president. Who are going to be the vice presidents which form the presidency council. Who's going to be the prime minister, the deputy prime minister, the various ministries. Who's going to lead them. Real political maneuvering, but no indication that anybody is thinking civil war.
Except for one person. There's one person that thinks there ought to be civil war in Iraq. And that would be Zarqawi, who is the Al Qaeda affiliated leader inside Iraq, and he stated that publicly. He says - if not publicly. he stated it to Osama bin Laden - that, "I'm sure we can win against the coalition. Maybe we ought to attack the Shia and try to get the Shia and Sunnis into some sort of civil war."
But you don't see that happening among Iraqis. That's not how they view it. Outside people, like Zarqawi and some of the foreign fighters, may go on to foster that, but certainly not inside Iraq. They're more interested, right now -it appears to me - in the political process and the way forward.
I think the prospects for civil war are fairly low.
Q: Last question on Iraq. Can I ask about the Israeli role with American troops in Iraq?
Gen Myers: You can. What are you going to ask me about it?
Q: I read some articles that Israel help (sic) the United States and the allies in Iraq and something like that, and you know that this is a hypersensitivity.
Gen Myers: It's no secret that U.S. military has a good military-to-military relationship with Israel, as we do with Egypt and many of the countries in the region. But there is no direct Israeli help inside Iraq. I mean that's just not happening. But there are things you can learn…
Q: Information and something like that?
Gen Myers: From the Israelis, in terms of how they've handled suicide bombers and things like that. There's some knowledge they've built up over time that is useful to the Iraqis that you can pass along. But no direct help.
Q: The U.S. has seventeen military bases in Iraq. What’s the status of such bases after the withdrawal of the U.S. troops from Iraq [inaudible]?
Gen Myers: In terms of Iraq, we have many locations where we have forces because we have seventeen brigades of troops and some Air Force, and so forth, in there that occupy these particular bases. But we're not going to stay in Iraq after the job is done unless the Iraqi government would invite us to stay, and even that would have to be negotiated between countries. That's not something that we've even talked about right now.
The important thing is that we help the Iraqis develop their capabilities so they can handle this problem. It will be for a longer-range discussion when there is actually an Iraqi government, a legitimate government elected under the new constitution. At that point, like all countries there would be, if the new Iraqi government - this is the one that's elected at the end of this year of 2005 in December - if they wanted to start talking to the United States about other arrangements, they would do that. Or they could ask us to leave. In fact, they can ask us to leave anytime, and we'd be obligated to do it because they're a sovereign government right now.
I think the status is that we're using them now and that when we pare down our forces over time that those would be turned over to Iraqi armed forces and security forces, and that would be the plan.
Q: Do you think the dissolving the Iraqi Army was a right decision?
Gen Myers: I think it's only interesting in a historical context. You can probably argue this from many, many, many different sides. There are those that say: "You should have kept the old army together." Others say: "No, you can't do that because the leadership was all too affiliated with the Saddam Hussein's regime, and that would not be tolerated by others in Iraqi government today." And then there's the fact that a lot of the army just disappeared. It just went to ground and there weren't recruits.
The fact is that the Iraqi forces today that have been equipped and trained and the Iraqi police. There are many former members of the old Iraqi armed forces that have been brought back to serve.
It's an interesting point to debate right now, but it's not as important as the fact that Iraqis are reaching out, and remember this is an Iraqi issue right now: who they bring in to recruit; who they bring in for leadership. It's an Iraqi decision. - And who they bring in to do that in many cases from the former armed forces.
Whether it was right or wrong, I don't know. I do know, at the time, it was very hard to find much of an army because a lot of it, given that a high percentage of it were conscripts…they all went to ground. They all went back to their homes. They didn't want to fight anymore. So, bringing them back is… But now we have. We've started to retract some of the folks in the former army.
Q: What are the reason behind cutting the numbers of Guantanamo detainees and returning some of them to their countries? What is their legal status in case of their countries' rejection to receive them in the light of the U.S. Federal Court decision that Guantanamo detainees have the rights of the war prisoners?
Gen Myers: We have a continuous review process to make sure the people that have been detained on the battlefield and sent to Guantanamo - that we review those cases periodically, and that those that are no longer deemed necessary to be detained - in fact, in some cases we had some that were extremely old and they went back to their home countries, some that were young went back.
When we first started returning these detainees to their countries, I think it turns out about seven of them were seen on the battlefield again, either killed or captured again; or we heard that they were on the battlefield again.
Where we can we would like to turn these detainees over to their countries of origin -- in some cases to be detained, to be held by them; in some cases to be put on trial by those countries; and, in some cases, they may release them depending on what the evidence is.
But that's a continuing process. I don't know the number right now, but it's been many. In the meantime, we do have several court cases that are active in the U.S. courts and our Department of Justice is working appeals to many of those cases. We're going to have to wait and see the outcome of those before we'll know fully what impact that's going to have on the detainees in Guantanamo. It's just too early to tell.
Q: General Myers, I would like to ask about Abu Ghraib, because it was a shock for us…
Gen Myers: It was a shock for me!
Q: I heard some news about that and understand that torture is still happening in Iraq. What's your opinion about that?
Gen Myers: First of all, I think what people have to understand is that the policy of the U.S. Government, from the President on down, is that we treat people humanely. In Iraq, of course, we had to treat them as enemy combatants in accordance with the Geneva Convention.
And so what you saw at Abu Ghraib was an aberration. It was individuals that behaved in a way that was not consistent with the policy of the United States Government or the guidance that they were given. And as you know, many of them have been on trial and some are in jail.
The one thing I think that your readers can be assured of is that we will take appropriate action against people who do not behave in accordance with our rules and our regulations and our policy. And we've done a good job of doing that over the decades. There will always be allegations perhaps. I mean, people that are set free or lawyers that are trying to defend somebody. There will always be allegations.
Our promise is that we will look at each one of those allegations and we will investigate them until we determine what the truth is, and then we'll deal with people appropriately. I think we've had over a hundred people go through our military justice system just on these abuse cases, with many more cases pending. But in each case, these are aberrations of behavior -- not U.S. policy, clearly.
And you said you were shocked. I was particularly shocked. I couldn't believe that we would have anybody that would do that.
Q: Today there was some news about a secret agreement between U.S. and Israel in striking Iran.
Gen Myers: That's preposterous.
Q: It's not true?
Gen Myers: Preposterous. It's not true.
Q: But is there no possibility of attacking Iran next?
Gen Myers: This is outside my lane. What the U.S. Government is doing is working with the EU and others on the Iranian issues of development of nuclear weapons.
I think the President said it well. He said, when he was in Europe…there were these allegations: “Well you're getting ready to or preparing to attack Iran.” He said, “No, it's not true.”
Q: But is there a military plan for dealing with Syria and Hizbullah?
Gen Myers: What we need is not a military plan. What we need is for the governments of Syria and Iran to cooperate and stay out of the affairs of Iraq as this fledgling democracy gets on its feet. It needs all the help it can get from its neighbors. It does not need interference. Countries can be interested, but they don't need to interfere - and, particularly, Syria. Facilitating the flow of either finances or people, foreign fighters, inside Iraq is not helpful at all. There are diplomatic processes that are working in both those areas and, of course, that's the way we hope it works out.
Q: The United States was asked by Japan that American troops should withdraw from Okinawa, and I think the United States didn't do that. Why?
Gen Myers: Actually, Japan has never asked that. What Japan and we've been working on since 1996 - very actively with Japan - is how to reduce the burden that Okinawa has because it hosts the majority of our forces in Japan. But they've not asked us to withdraw our forces. This is an issue that U.S. Government and the Japanese Government have been working for a very long time.
I served there in '93 to '96. We worked on it all the time. If anything, it's more intense now. But it certainly cannot be characterized as: they've asked us to withdraw forces. What they've asked is we negotiate in good faith with them on trying to reduce the burden on the people of Okinawa, which we take as a very serious issue and are working with them on.
Q: Thank you very much, General. But we forgot to ask you about the nature of your visit to Egypt.
Gen Myers: The nature of my visit is very easy: It is to continue to build on the good military-to-military relationship that we have. We in the United States feel it's very, very important.
Q: You talked with Marshall Tantawi?
Gen Myers: I did. The Field Marshall and…
Q: This is a new BRIGHT STAR?
Gen Myers: BRIGHT STAR ‘05, we talked a little bit about that as well. That's important not just for Egypt - or Egypt and the U.S. as an exercise - it's important for the region. There are going to be 38 observers, 38 countries observing and 14 or 15 participating. That's over 50 countries. It's a big deal.
Q: Thank you for interview.
Gen Myers: Thanks, gentlemen.
Embassy
Main Page
