SENATOR EVAN BAYH: Thank you. I want to express my appreciation for your service. In a democracy, having a dialogue like this and questioning your recommendations, even your judgment, is entirely appropriate. I don’t think that questioning your integrity is. So, I appreciate your candor, your service and your presence here today.

This is our fourth hearing in the last several days. We’ve heard from the GSA; from General Jones; we’ve had the National Intelligence Estimate, and now we have your thinking. Let me give you what I have concluded is the bottom line on all of this and get your response. The bottom line on all of this is that the American people—particularly our servicemen and women, but also our taxpayers—would be required to continue to sacrifice in Iraq for an indefinite period of time to allow Iraqi politicians to get their act together, to make the tough decisions that only they can make to fully begin the process of political reconciliation. What’s your reaction to that?

AMBASSADOR RYAN CROCKER: There is a process underway that we’ve talked about over the course of the afternoon. It’s bottom-up to some degree, it’s top-down to some degree, and it’s linkages between. It’s the beginnings, if you will, of a political reconciliation process that obviously needs to go much farther if it is to carry Iraq to a position of security and stability over the long run.

BAYH: Ambassador, there is a question behind my observation. For several years now, the progress has not been adequate. I think we’d all agree on that. The theory has been that insecure people do not make hard decisions. We need to increase their confidence, their securities perhaps, so that they begin to make the hard decisions. It just doesn’t seem to have worked that way. They dither and they delay. So we face this dilemma: If we stand by them, they take our support for granted, get a little more comforted and don’t make the hard decisions.

Yet your advice, as I understand it, is that timelines would not be in our best interest. My direct question to you is: What about accountability for taking these hard steps? What about consequences if they don’t? Sixty to seventy troops are killed every month. 9 to 12 billion dollars are spent every month. They’re not doing what they need to do. When do we say “enough already,” and have some consequences when they don’t?

CROCKER: Again, it’s important to bear in mind the recent past. 2006 up through early 2007 was an extremely bad period in Iraq. Not only were things not moving forward, but they were sliding back in political terms, economic terms and, above all, security terms. Iraq came pretty close, I think, to just unraveling that year, which began with the February bombing of the golden mosques.

BAYH: There was some mystery in Iraq before that time period you just mentioned, and they weren’t making progress then either.

CROCKER: Senator, the challenges are immense. The failures are there, too, on the Iraqi side. It is frustrating to me. I’m out there. We are pushing them constantly in all sorts of ways. But I’ve got to be honest: This is going to take more time.

BAYH: And I think we all need to be honest with ourselves, Ambassador. I appreciate the General’s comments about modesty and guarding against making predictions. But isn’t it possible that, at the end of the day, in spite of all of our efforts and support and encouragement, this just may be beyond them for a variety of reasons: outside interference, historic enmities, a lack of leadership, all those kinds of things. And don’t we constantly need to be evaluating their capabilities of whether they can get this done to justify the continuing sacrifices that we’re making?

CROCKER: I think, clearly, that’s the case. We’re here before you today to give our best assessment in four lines of operation where we see things standing now.

BAYH: What you’re hearing from a lot of us is, so often in these last several years, we’ve tried to give the Iraqi leadership the benefit of the doubt. But now only doubt remains. So there we are. General, I hope that you’ve got to be a little skeptical, too, and that’s why I come down on the side of accountability, because gentle encouragement just doesn’t seem to have gotten the results that we’ve wanted.

General, I’d like to turn to you. I thought you had an excellent, very candid response to Senator Warner’s question. He asked you going forward, with the recommendations that you’re making, will that make America safer? And you said that you could not answer that question because that was beyond the scope of your responsibilities.

GENERAL DAVID PETRAEUS: I thank you, Senator, for an opportunity to address that frankly. Candidly, I have been so focused on Iraq that drawing all the way out was something that, for a moment there, was a bit of a surprise. But I think that we have very, very clear and very serious national interests in Iraq. Achieving those interests has a very serious implication for our safety and our security. So I think the answer really, to come back to it, is “yes.” But again, frankly, having focused down and down and down, that was something that really, at first glance…

BAYH: I judge that by your response, you’ve given that a little additional thought [since asked by Senator Warner].

PETRAEUS: Immediately after, actually.

BAYH: You referred to the DIA and you referred to things that we picked up about how Al Qaeda used Iraq and has made it a central point in the war on terror. Let me refer to some other public statements made by our intelligence services. Let me ask you this question on Iraq not becoming a platform from which terrorists can operate against us or other countries. Almost every responsible person thinks that we need to keep a capability there to deal with that.

CIA experts indicated in public testimony that it is their assessment that that our presence in Iraq is generating more radicals and terrorists than we are eliminating in Iraq. So our net basis is that we are actually creating more enemies than we are eliminating. They have also indicated that Al Qaeda is reconstituting itself in Afghanistan, perhaps the tribal areas in Pakistan. I asked them this question directly, General. I said, “Who do they hate more: The apostates or the infidels?” Once we’ve reduced our footprint and aren’t as obvious a target anymore, where is their enmity going to be turned? Their response was that they really hate them more than they hate us.

My question to you is, isn’t it at least possible, looking at this from a global perspective, that the strategy which we pursue in Iraq, indeed our presence there, is in fact counterproductive in terms of the global war against terror and making America safer?

PETRAEUS: Senator, I think again if Al Qaeda was to be able to retain a substantial presence in Iraq—particularly the sanctuary in the order of what they had in certain areas prior to the surge—that that would be very serious. I don’t know where they would go next. Some have speculated that they would, in fact, focus more on Afghanistan; others, more in the particular region to go after other countries in that particular region. It is hard to tell whether they will continue to regard it that way because of the loss of some momentum there. I am not sure that it is true that they are still generating more radicals in Iraq.

I think, again, one of the big changes that I’ve reported in the past six or eight or twelve months, if you will—dating back to certainly October of last year when the first of these tribal compositions to Al Qaeda emerged—is that the Sunni Arabs in Al Qaeda, and that is the area where they had been able to find sanctuary, have in large numbers turned against Al Qaeda. They’ve gotten over the fact that they’re not going to run Iraq again. They’ve gotten over the fact that they’re disrespected in their view, dispossessed, and now want to make the Euphrates River Valley a decent place to live, work, and raise a family and maybe even open up the border. They’ve got a police academy again and the rest of that and rebuild Ramadii and some of these other places and others have seen the same.

What they really want now is a seat at the table in Baghdad. They want adequate representation. They want their share of this ethno-sectarian competition for power resources. They want their share of the resources. That’s why it is significant, as the Ambassador reported on the Anbar Summit that was held out here the other day—the second of these, where the national government has reached out to them in such a substantial way. So how, I think, Al Qaeda plays out is of enormous importance to country and to the overall international jihadist movement. Failing to achieve our objectives there would just be an enormous shot of adrenaline to them.

BAYH: Gentlemen, thank you again. My time has expired. I’ll close by saying that we all want to be successful in Iraq. We all hope that these signs you indicate come to fruition. There’s a lot of history here, and we have to ask ourselves: What if they do not? How do we go about securing the national securities of our country? Thank you.