<html><body> <TABLE width="101%" border=0> <TBODY> <TR> <TD width="17%">8:30 a.m. </TD> <TD width="34%">Registration and Breakfast</TD> <TD width="49%"> </TD></TR> <TR> <TD width="17%"> </TD> <TD width="34%"> </TD> <TD width="49%"> </TD></TR> <TR> <TD width="17%">9:00 </TD> <TD width="34%">Introduction: </TD> <TD width="49%">Danielle Pletka, AEI</TD></TR> <TR> <TD width="17%"> </TD> <TD width="34%"> </TD> <TD width="49%"></TD></TR> <TR> <TD width="17%">9:15</TD> <TD width="83%" colSpan=2>Panel 1: The Definition of Federalism & the Structure of Government</TD></TR> <TR> <TD width="17%"> </TD> <TD width="34%"> Opening remarks: Speakers: </TD> <TD width="49%">Kanan Makiya, Iraq Memory Foundation</TD></TR> <TR> <TD width="17%"> </TD> <TD width="34%"> </TD> <TD width="49%"> Munthir Al Fadhal, Constitutional Commission</TD></TR> <TR> <TD width="17%"> </TD> <TD width="34%">         Moderator:</TD> <TD width="49%"> Rend Rahim, former Ambassador-designate from Iraq to the U.S. Judy Van Rest, International Republican Institute  Qubad Talabany, Patriotic Union of Kurdistan  Mustafa Safwat Rashid Sidqi, Independent Election Commission of Iraq Danielle Pletka, AEI</TD></TR> <TR> <TD width="17%">11:00 </TD> <TD width="83%" colSpan=2>Panel 2: National Defense, Security, and the Role of Militias</TD></TR> <TR> <TD width="17%"> </TD> <TD width="34%">Speakers: </TD> <TD width="49%">Frederick W. Kagan, AEI Colonel Frederick R. Kienle, National Defense University</TD></TR> <TR> <TD width="17%"></TD> <TD width="34%">  </TD> <TD width="49%"> Entifadh Qanbar, Deputy Military Attache </TD></TR> <TR> <TD width="17%">   12:30 p.m. </TD> <TD width="83%" colSpan=2> Moderator:                               Frederick Kagan, AEI Lunch</TD></TR> <TR> <TD width="17%">1:30 </TD> <TD width="83%" colSpan=2>Panel 3: The Role of Religion</TD></TR> <TR> <TD width="17%"> </TD> <TD width="34%">Speakers: </TD> <TD width="49%">Sheikh Afeef Uddin Al-Gaylani, Darul Qadriyah International </TD></TR> <TR> <TD width="17%"> </TD> <TD width="34%"> </TD> <TD width="49%">Zainab Al-Suwaij, American Islamic Congress</TD></TR> <TR> <TD width="17%"> </TD> <TD width="34%">   Moderator:</TD> <TD width="49%"> Sama Hadad, Iraqi Prospect Organization Ghanim Jawad, Al-Khoei Foundation Reuel Marc Gerecht, AEI</TD></TR> <TR> <TD width="17%"> 3:30   4:30 </TD> <TD width="83%" colSpan=2>   Keynote Lecture                    Lt. General David H. Petraeus, Commander, Multi-National Security Transition Command       Panel 4: Rights in the New Iraq, Women, Freedom of the Press, and Justice</TD></TR> <TR> <TD width="17%"> </TD> <TD width="34%"></TD> <TD width="49%">  </TD></TR> <TR> <TD width="17%"></TD> <TD width="83%" colSpan=2></TD></TR> <TR> <TD width="17%"> </TD> <TD width="34%">Speakers: </TD> <TD width="49%">Salem Chalabi, attorney</TD></TR> <TR> <TD width="17%"> </TD> <TD width="34%"> </TD> <TD width="49%">Mishkat Moumin, former Iraqi minister for environment</TD></TR> <TR> <TD width="17%"> </TD> <TD width="34%"></TD> <TD width="49%">Ammar Al Shahbander, Institute for War and Peace Reporting</TD></TR> <TR> <TD width="17%">   5:45</TD> <TD width="34%"> Moderator: Closing Remarks:</TD> <TD width="49%"> Michael Rubin, AEI Michael Rubin, AEI</TD></TR> <TR> <TD width="17%">6:00 </TD> <TD width="34%"> Adjournment</TD> <TD width="49%"> </TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE> Proceedings: MS. PLETKA:  Good morning, everybody.  Just a preliminary request, if I might ask that everybody would just ensure that their cell phones are turned off or out on vibrate as a courtesy to all the people here.  It is terribly disruptive.  I'm Danielle Pletka.  I'm the Vice President, Foreign and Defense Policy Studies of the American Enterprise Institute.  It's with a great deal of pleasure, it's hard for me to express just how much pleasure it is, that I open this conference on Iraq here at the American Enterprise Institute almost 3 years to the day from our prewar series on the future of post-Saddam Iraq.  There were more than 400 people at that conference and many thousands more who attended the remainder of the services, as well as our regular black coffee briefings during the war, and I see a lot of familiar faces from those briefings.  We focused on questions of federalism, distribution of oil, sectarianism, the role of religion, and the crafting of a new constitution lo these 2 and 3 years ago.  Among our speakers then were to be a future Defense Minister, a Deputy Prime Minister, future Ambassadors to the U.S. and the U.N., Deputy Ambassador to the U.N., the future Minister of Oil, the future head of the Central Bank of Iraq, members of the National Assembly and the Constitutional Drafting Committee, and many, many more who have contributed to the rebuilding of the Iraqi state.  We had very great hopes.  Some of them were realized and others were not.  Great ideas were put forward some of which were heeded and some of which were not.  Today we meet with 10 days to go before the national referendum on the Iraqi Constitution.  That document is far from perfect.  Indeed, it is in many ways deeply flawed.  It is a product of haste and of political machinations on the part of Iraqis and Americans.  We it seems have not learned the lessons of the Coalition Provisional Authority.  We cannot resist the temptation to save Iraqis from their own mistakes, from their own learning and from their own experiences.  The Constitution, perhaps the most important document to come out of the modern Middle East, has been reduced to a benchmark on America's way out the door.  Could it have been better?  Was it the best we can hope for in a country beleaguered by the challenges of post-totalitarian rebuilding?  That's a question for our speakers to answer rather than your host, and thank goodness for that.  These are the people we really want you to hear from.  I'm so pleased to be joined by our wonderful group of panelists most of whom have made the long journey from Iraq to be here.  I should also extend a word of apology to those who wished to come, Abhaden Jamal Adin, Alifasal Alimi, Costa Prosul (ph), among many others, absent because their visas will only be ready at the U.S. Embassy on Friday.  I hope we'll be able to have you return to hear them in the very near future.  Finally, let me say a word about Iraq and Iraqis.  We are full of criticism these days.  I myself have been full of criticism.  We don't like war, we don't like terrorists, we don't like Islamists, we don't like politicking.  All of our criticism, mine included, does perhaps a little bit of an injustice to those who have committed their lives to bettering their countries.  It is a better place in Iraq today.  We should have no doubt of that fact.  The United States as committed itself to supporting democracy in the Middle East and we should face up to the fact that it is not going to be easy.  Perhaps you'd like to take the opportunity at some point during this day to ask our speakers whether they think it's worth the fight.  With that I'm going to introduce our panel which is a distinguished one indeed, although we have the late Rend Rahim I can see keeping up her fine tradition at AEI.  I can talk behind her back.  She's not here.  (Laughter.)  MS. PLETKA:  Qubad Talabany, an old friend who also appeared as part of our earlier series, serves as the Representative of the Kurdistan Regional Government to the United States.  In spring 2003 he served as the senior foreign relations officer for the PUK in Iraq.  He comes from an auspicious family.  We're very happy to have him with us.  Judy Van Rest is the Executive Vice President of the International Republican Institute.  She had been a Senior Adviser for Governance at the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad and also served as the CPA's Director for the Office of Democratic Initiatives.  Mustafa Safwat Rashid Sidqi, got the whole name here, is a member of the Independent Election Commission of Iraq.  He is an attorney and a founder of the Kurdistan Human Rights Organization.  Rend Rahim, we'll introduce her anyway, shall we, was the Ambassador-Designate of Iraq to the U.S. until October 2004.  She is a founding member of the Iraq Foundation, a very old friend of ours and a frequent guest at AEI.  I don't want to miss a soul.  Of course, Munthir Al Fadhal, also a member of our original series, is a member of the Iraqi National Assembly, a member of the Constitutional Drafting Committee, and he was previously a Visiting Professor of Middle Eastern Law at the International College of Law in London.  Last but not least, and I finally managed to do this in the correct order, Kanan Makiya will introduce this panel and speak for a few minutes at the opening of our conference.  He is not just an extremely good friend and old friend, a participant in many, many panels here, he is the Sylvia Hassenfeld Professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at Brandeis University and the founder of the Iraq Memory Foundation which does wonderful work on preserving the legacy of totalitarianism in Iraq and reminding us all what it is that Iraq has left behind.  With that, Kanan, I'll turn to you, and if you'd like to come speak from here that would be perfect.  MR. MAKIYA:  Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.  It seems like a million years have passed since that fateful day that Danny just reminded us of before the Iraq war also in October when the AEI organized a conference so similar to this.  I presented at that memorable occasion 3 years ago a paper entitled A Model for Post-Saddam Iraq.  It hasn't been a million years, it's only been three, but so much has happened since, so many dashed hopes, broken dreams, a lot of water under the bridge.  Instead of the fledgling democracy that we said back then was possible and the slightly wiser ones amongst us did not claim it was inevitable, merely that it was possible, if it took the form as I said back in that paper, of a federal non-Arab and demilitarized Iraq.  Instead of that dream, we have the reality of a virulent insurgency whose efficiency is matched only by the barbarousness of the tactics it employs, an insurgency that is waging a war on the very possibility of a new order in Iraq, an order that it feels deeply and threatened by.  We looked back then to the United States for our liberation and looked to the United States also for liberation from dictatorship that by and large was in fact not accompanied by large-scale civilian casualties.  On both of these counts, to be fair, the United States delivered.  That the aftermath of that war was riddled with mistakes, poor planning, inadequate troop levels for a project as ambitious as military occupation and reconstruction a la Germany and Japan post-World War II, all of these are subjects that have been much commented upon and written about by Americans, for Americans in relation to the American leadership that takes responsibility, that should take responsibility, that does take responsibility for this war, and that is how it should be.  But what has not been sufficiently done is an examination of our Iraqi failures to live up to the promise that we in opposition held ourselves up to.  It did not help that our liberation from tyranny which we were not allowed to participate in I might add, and that is a strategic error, another of those errors that the United States government fell into in the run-up to the war, it did not help that our liberation came hand in glove with what you might all our civil war.  The two were not separated by a century or so of time as in the case of the United States.  To be an American today is to be a child both of its Revolutionary War against Britain of the 18th century and the constitutional processes that were set in motion back then, and it is to be a child of the bitter and blood and terrible American Civil War of the late 18th century.  To be an Iraqi tomorrow after this insurgency is crushed as I am sure it will be, is to be both a child of Saddam's 30-year legacy of brutal rule, and the dragon's teeth that he and his legacy has succeeded in sewing among us as Iraqis even after his demise, a legacy that takes the shape of a terrible internecine violence which is tearing today the different communities of Iraq apart and which is destroying the very idea or the very possibility of an Iraq.  Did it have to be this way?  I don't think so.  But to dwell on this now is to cry over spilled milk, and I shall do that.  The die has been cast.  It is too late to turn back.  Daily our Iraqi positions harden on all sides to one another.  Our salvation now it seems to me lies only in a hard look at ourselves, at our mistakes, at our by now proven failure to rise above the politics of self-interest, of sectarianism and ethnic and personal self-aggrandizement.  In that spirit, let me harken back to my talk here in October 2002 and say a few things about my own mistakes.  Firstly, on the issue of federalism which is the subject of our panel today and which of course I support back then and still now with all my heart, I back then seriously underestimated our Iraqi inability to make it a territorial and not an ethnic or sectarian kind of federal solution for the organization of the Iraqi state.  We now in Iraq have to function as though with what we have inherited, with what we have created, we were going to have a federal system that might have been inclusive and democratic and if it were going to hold together, but we did not know how powerful was the rhetoric of sectarian and ethnic and self-interest that would eventually lead to something whose consequences are still unknown.  We are now inexorably moving it seems to me towards a tripartite federal structure that includes Kurdish, Shiite and Sunni regions that pretty much at least for the next few decades are going to define themselves in that way, thus increasing the chance of a permanently weak center and perhaps even dealing a death blow to the idea of Iraq that had sustained the Iraqi opposition prior to the war for so many years.  Secondly, on demilitarization, I feel now, although I was right in principle to argue for it as strongly as I did, the implementation was not given sufficient thought and in practice it was a failed policy.  No matter what the state of the army post-liberation, it was wrong to make an enemy of it the day after.  You should never in politics humiliate those whom you have defeated.  We should have done the same thing, i.e., demilitarize, only gradually over many years using what was left of the army while all the time gradually, intelligently, whittling down its bases of power so that after a period of 3 to 5 years we might very well have got what we wanted but not in the form of one fell swoop.  A third issue upon which I addressed that talk is the all-important issue of de-Baathification, another policy that was well founded in principle but was practiced more in the breech than on the ground.  You cannot punish and exclude in a country as torn up and beat up as Iraq and at the same time forgive and include.  The victims of Saddam's regime have not yet received their proper due.  No one really was paying attention to them when constructing the de-Baathification policy.  They have not been acknowledged by society and listened to.  More important was to target the so-called victimizers, but victimizers who more often than not slid into or were very much the same people as the victims themselves.  That too is a policy that in practice we failed in.  The fourth point that I would like to make is that I personally, and this is perhaps the most serious error of all, grossly underestimated the powerful reach and social basis of the Baath Party inside Iraq.  The fact of the matter is, that party was not defeated in April 2003, why, it did not even fight back in 2003.  It is fighting back now, and the war that should have happened or that we all thought had happened back then is going on now.  We in the Iraqi opposition who did not even do the job of unseating it back in 2003, the American Army did that on our behalf, are having today to organize ourselves to fight a constantly morphing and flexible organization that we consistently underestimated.  We underestimated back then and we continue to understate it today.  The feasibility of an alternative and democratic model for post-Saddam Iraq which was the title of my talk back in October 2002 rested on a very powerful premise that I stated I think in the second sentence, imaginative Iraqi and American leadership, an Iraqi leadership in particular that had a nonselfish, long-term and all-inclusive political vision.  That kind of leadership has not yet made its appearance in Iraq.  Perhaps it will.  The time is not too late.  Politics in tumultuous moments like this can do strange things and perhaps they are there waiting in the wings.  My point is, our failures so far are proof positive that it has not yet emerged.  The rhetoric and the language of the new Iraq that we had so much hope in has not yet found its spokespersons in the political arena.  I think I will stop there and let my colleagues pick up from here.  Thank you very much.  MS. PLETKA:  I haven't talked to my panelists about the order in which they'd like to speak, so I'm going to use the always sophisticated system of going down the line, if my panelists don't object.  Rend, that puts you in the hot seat.  Be careful with the microphone.  Everybody knows we have major sound problems here.  Rend, I introduced you beforehand, but we're very happy to have you back here again.  Always happy, so thank you.  MS. RAHIM:  Thank you, Danny.  Thanks to AEI.  I think before I proceed any further I want to say that I was I believe at AEI on the occasion that Kanan just spoke of and we did indeed share high hopes.  I can only say right now that I am in complete agreement with everything Kanan has just said.  I am going to be less poetic and a little more prosaic in my presentation and talk about the structure about government, not so much about federalism, but about the whole structure of the central government and its relationship to the parts.  To begin with, I think it's important to note that the constitution as a whole is written not with a view to the future, not with a view to constructing a viable state or a viable country in the future.  That kind of thinking, it wasn't written to create something that worked.  The entire constitution in my view was written as a reaction to Iraq's history and to the makeup and structure of past governments and the ills that these past structures led to in Iraq.  This kind of historic stigma is made evident in the constitution in two particular features.  One of them is a Parliament that is paramount and virtually unchallenged within the structure of the central government.  The second feature is an almost total devolution of power from the center to federated or decentralized regions to such an extent that when one looks at the central government in the constitution, one could almost say that there's no there there.  The constitution was written hastily and under extreme pressure, and what it actually achieves, although it aims at creating a devolution of power in a central government, is really a frustrating degree of ambiguity and confusion in the articulation of the parts in their relationships to the center.  And in the respective prerogatives of the central government, federated and decentralized regions, these ambiguities and confusions in my view, if we do actually end up with having a state and a constitutional court, should keep that constitutional court working in overdrive for a very long time.  There is a high probability that these ambiguities and contradictions will eventually spin the state out of control.  It speaks a little bit about Parliament.  It is envisaged as an all-powerful institution that elects the Presidential Council, that is, the President and the Vice Presidents.  It can also dismiss them.  The Prime Minister is chosen from the largest bloc in Parliament.  The Cabinet is confirmed by Parliament.  Parliament can dismiss the Prime Minister or any minister or the whole Cabinet.  The Parliament can even vote to dissolve itself.  And most laws, if I read the constitution correctly, can be passed by Parliament by what amounts to no more than 26 percent of the number of seats in Parliament.  It is a simple majority of quorum.  If quorum is 51 percent, a simple majority is 26 percent of that, so roughly 26 or 27 percent, which means that a very small number of people in Parliament can wield extraordinary power.  When you look at the Articles of the Constitution, almost all the Articles are followed in a time-honored Arab fashion of Constitution writing.  Almost every Article has the suffix "as determined by law, as regulated by law."  There are hardly any Articles in the Constitution that are absolute in the rights or prerogatives that they give.  The President in comparison has virtually no power, and the Presidential Council must act in most cases unanimously.  In other words, three people must all agree on everything.  That includes the only area in which the Presidential Council has any authority which is to veto bills and return them to Parliament and require upon a second reading or a third reading a three-fifths majority of Parliament, but that kind of veto also requires the entire consensus, a unanimous vote by the Presidential Council which means that actually the Presidential Council will have extremely little leverage over legislation.  The only check on parliamentary authority is the Federal Supreme Court which is very ill defined in the Constitution.  It is left to subsequent legislation to define the composition, the number of judges on that court, the composition of that court.  The only thing we do know is that it will have people who are experts in Sharia law.  We also don't know how this court is going to operate.  It will probably only look at laws after they have passed.  In other words, bills not be presented to it, but it is the only body in the land which actually can strike down laws and determine that they are unconstitutional either on the basis of the totality of the Constitution or on the basis of the religious litmus test that is built into the Constitution.  There is also another litmus test in the Constitution which says that laws should not contravene the principles of democracy, but I would like somebody to identify for me and define what those principles of democracy are that we and this constitutional court are going to acknowledge as universally acceptable and therefore a suitable litmus test.  I do not know of any, and nobody has come forward to define those.  The relations between the central government and the regions are fuzzy.  For example, there's lack of clarity in the prerogatives of the central government.  There are overlaps of authority between the center and the regions.  There is shared authority between the center and the regions which, amazingly enough, is premised on the assumption that the central government and the regions will arrive at consensus by a process of responsible and mature decision making and that we have the mechanisms for building that consensus which it seems to me so far we haven't completely failed that, but we haven't completely succeeded at.  So the idea that these shared authorities will actually be possible to arrive at through consensus building is a little far fetched, and yet a very large area of governance is under this section of shared responsibilities.  The Constitution is written as if the central government is going to have real power.  I'll give you an example.  In the Constitution, Articles 45 to 111 covering 10-1/2 pages of the Constitution are devoted to the structure and the mechanics and the authorities of the central government including the Legislative, the Executive and Judiciary Branches, as well as the Special Commissions.  In comparison, the Federated Regions which in reality wield enormous power merit only six Articles and one page of the Constitution, and the non-Federated Regions which currently are the vast majority only merit two Articles and one-half of a page.  As to the mechanisms of how the central government will in fact work with the regions and the nonfederated governorates, there is absolutely no mention of that in the Constitution.  Article 107 defines the exclusive authorities of the central government which include federal policy and diplomatic representation, international treaties, national security and defense, issuing currencies, weights and measures, naturalization and residency and the national budget.  On the face of it, it's an impressive list.  But when we actually look more closely, many of those authorities which are supposed to be exclusive, the exclusivity only runs as to policy making and not to implementation, and in some of them even policy making is shared.  For example, even though the government is in charge of defense and security, the regions will have their own regional guard and where the regional guard enter into the national security equation, especially in internal security, is not made clear.  It seems to me that internal security right now rather than external security is our major challenge in Iraq and creating a situation in the Constitution in which who is ultimately in charge of internal security is a very dangerous situation.  If the regions can have their own national guard, and incidentally, their own police and their own intelligence services, how is the whole system and how is the coordination with the central government going to work in order for the state as a whole to combat the raging terrorism and insurgency that we now face?  I simply don't know the answer to that question.  On oil which is the only source of revenue for the entire state and not just for the central government, the oil sector is part of the shared responsibilities between the center and the oil-producing regions and there is the optimistic assumption that everything is going to be done by consensus, by mutual agreement on the development policy.  And in terms of the division of revenue from oil, the Constitution simply says that the strategies will achieve the highest benefit for the Iraqi people and that the revenue will be shared equitably.  Failing consensus, the Constitution says that in all areas that are not within the exclusive authority of the central government, in all those areas, regional laws will prevail.  This will include oil, gas, water, all other natural resources, electricity, taxation, regional guard, internal security, environment, health, education, social welfare, development policies, foreign and domestic corporate laws and regulations and transportation, and many others that I can't count.  In reality, the only areas in which the central government really has authority and the power of implementation are external defense, foreign policy, currency and the Central Bank and naturalization laws.  What concerns me personally most is that the central government will have neither the power nor the means to enforce the Constitution or federal laws in any of the regions.  It certainly doesn't have them now.  The Constitution will de jure rob the central government from that ability.  For example, if constitutional rights and freedoms are violated in any particular region, the central government will have no means of forcing the regional governments to respect those rights.  I recall here, not that I was around, but that in the U.S. after Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, both the Eisenhower administration and later the Johnson administration enforced federal law in Southern states, federal laws that required desegregation in universities and in schools, and they did that by federalizing the National Guard and using the National Guard to enforce those laws, and in Iraq the regional governments will be able to violate the Constitution and federal laws with impunity because the central government has absolutely no authority.  Finally, what we have is a Constitution for a confederation without any clear lines of authority.  The potential for conflicting interpretations and implementation and the general confusion over authority is a high probability in the future.  The Constitution can lead to a central government that is simply irrelevant in an Iraqi state.  Right now in Iraq the only real institutions that have substance exist in Kurdistan.  The institutions of the central government are weak and lack not only authority but any implementing capability.  Institutions in the regions, in the governorates other than Kurdistan are in fact nonexistent except for the militias.  To devolve power so quickly and so drastically from an already weak central government to regions that have no capacity except what is provided by militias in my view is a recipe for even greater chaos than we have now in Iraq.  Thank you.  (Applause.)  MS. PLETKA:  On that hopeful note, let me turn to you Qubad.  MR. TALABANY:  Thank you, Danny.  It's a pleasure to be here once again to talk about my favorite subject, federalism.  We've been ranting on about federalism for well over a decade now and we're now starting to actually develop this concept of federalism into something that hopefully is tangible and hopefully is not as gloomy as my friends Kanan and Rend have portrayed it to be.  The reason that Iraq has failed as a state since its inception is because we've had a centralized rule that hasn't delivered to all the people of Iraq.  In fact, Iraq has never really been a viable state.  Kurds have never felt Iraqis, and the frustration showed by the majority of the Shiite population since the overthrow of Saddam has really highlighted the fact that the Shiites have also never really benefited from the State of Iraq.  What's happened and what's upset a lot of people is the renaissance of the rebirth of two peoples in a country that have been downtrodden and oppressed, the Shiites and the Kurds.  Both are calling for a decentralized government, and that's exactly what it means, decentralized government, limiting the powers of the central government.  The reality is the central government today in Iraq is unable to deliver anything to the people of Iraq, one, because of its inefficiency and incompetence, two, because of the security situation and, three, because they just are not out there in the regions.  As Rend said, the only viable institution that is functioning well, I'm modest to say, is the Kurdistan Regional Government in the North.  Hopefully in time we can develop political institutions that can deliver to people whether it's local government, whether it's federal government, whether it's across the board, but that's something that's going to take time to develop.  Institutions take time to develop, they take leaders with vision and they take apart a population that is willing to participate in the political process.  I was going to talk about which powers, the central government has what power and the regions have which powers, but Rend has eloquently described to you those different powers.  And yes, constitutions are vague.  The separation of powers are vague.  Even in the United States today you have conflicts over whether the center has jurisdiction or the states have jurisdiction, and the concept of federalism is a work in progress.  There are very controversial provisions in this Constitution such as the provision that says all that is not written in the exclusive powers of the federal authorities is in the authorities of the regions.  That causes a lot of concern among Iraqi nationalists and certainly some of our friends in the region, but the reality is that as Rend said, what can a central government do at this stage in time to prevent the regions from implementing what they feel is best for their people?  Very little because there are no functioning institutions.  I wouldn't say that the central government has no power.  I think it does have power, and a lot of that depends on who is in power and how functioning that institution of the central government is.  Like I said, at the moment it isn't doing that well, but hopefully in time when there is rule of law, there's law and order and there is a development of real functioning structures, that can be addressed.  In order for this to work there has to be trust between the different communities, trust between the Kurds and the Shiites and the Sunnis, the Christians, the Turkomans, everybody involved.  At this point in time I'm saddened to say there is little trust.  We've seen this over the last few days with this election law that has been passed that's made all the front lines, and I as a Kurd am against this.  I think this is unfair to have only the percentage of the registered voters count towards the referendum.  I think personally that they should count the votes, if the votes add up to two-thirds of the majority, then that's what should count, not the registered voters.  So we have to make extra efforts to include other communities, in particular the Sunni communities, and try to explain to them that federalism is actually a concept and a system that can protect them, and this Constitution actually protects the Sunnis as much as it protects the Kurds and the Shiites.  Because with these checks and balances, with the federalism, the Sunnis will be protected from the domination by the majority.  We have a lot to do, the Constitution is far from perfect, but I think it is probably the best that we could deliver in the period of time that we had to draft it.  No constitution is perfect, but I think we could fight over the wording of this Constitution until we're blue in the face, whether Islam is a source of legislation, the source of legislation, a basic source of legislation or the main basic source of legislation.  It really doesn't matter.  What matters is what institution will uphold this Constitution.  What is the body that will determine, interpret and implement this Constitution?  That will only be clear after the elections in December, which is why we need to not focus too much on October 15th and what the turnout is and how it happens.  We need to focus on how we get a government in place that is representative, that is transparent, that is accountable and that can interpret this Constitution in a way that makes everybody almost happy.  Iraqis will never entirely be happy.  With that I will really hand it over to Danielle to continue the program, and we'll be ready for questions and answers at the end.  MS. PLETKA:  Thank you, Qubad.  I know we'll you up on that.  Let's not clap not because we don't all really want to, because we can all clap really a lot at the end and that will get us through the speakers.  (Laughter.)  MS. PLETKA:  Two things.  The first is that I was very remiss and didn't tell everybody at the outset for those who need translation, from our native English we should be all right, but channel 5 is Arabic, channel 6 is English, and I apologize.  The second thing is Michael I think you just handed us a piece of paper saying that that vote rule change has been rescinded, so that's very good news.  We work quick.  With that, let me turn to Munthir Al Fadhal.  I want to note that Munthir's study which I have not yet read because he just gave it to me this morning but which promises to be very interesting, legal studies, federalism, human rights, democracy, role of law, war crimes in Kurdistan and the future of Iraq, I can't believe the book is so short, Munthir, is on our table outside for those of you who might be interested.  This is what it looks like.  Without further ado, Munthir, over to you.  Thank you.  MR. AL FADHAL:  Thank you, Danny.  Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.  I sent my paper in English and the Arabic languages to my colleague Moly and Rashil (ph) and I have the American Enterprise Institute publish my paper and distributed to all colleagues.  But I don't like to speak in Swedish, but I try to speak in my mother language, in Arabic, and in a short time I am ready to answer any questions about the Constitution because, as you know, I am a member of the Constitutional Committee.  MS. PLETKA:  The translation devices are all right outside the door for those of you who need them.  We'll give you just a minute to turn on.  Remember, channel 5 is Arabic, channel 6 is English.  MR. AL FADHAL:  (Speech in Arabic.)  MS. PLETKA:  I'm going to turn now to Judy Van Rest, and I want to make one note, particularly, there will be and has been a good deal of criticism of the Coalition Provisional Authority of which Judy was a part, and I think that it's safe to say that all of us who have spent a lot of time working on Iraq recognize that it unlike so many things in the U.S. government was not a sum of its parts.  There were so many great people who worked in the CPA with the best of intentions and perhaps all of them added together did not make a greater being, but Judy was one of the terrific people there, and I want to acknowledge that.  With that, over to you, Judy.  MS. VAN REST:  Thank you, Danny.  That was very kind and very much appreciated.  I am pleased to be here today taking part in this discussion about Iraq.  It's a country near and dear to my heart.  Having spent a year there, I was able to witness history in the making.  And even though I haven't been there since last December, I have a keen interest in what happens there, not to mention the enduring friendships I have made among many Iraqis who I think will be my friends for a lifetime.  I'm going to focus my remarks on Iraq's current government and how it has worked from a practitioner's point of view.  By way of background, the International Republican Institute of which I think many of you are familiar, along with our sister organization the National Democratic Institute, has been working in Iraq for the past 2 years conducting programs, training, civil society organizations, helping them to conduct civic education, voter education, trying to assist political parties and coalition building.  A large part of our program is also focused on governance.  We have been focused on training Iraqi staff in communications and research skills that will help set up the necessary functions within the Executive and Legislative Branches, and we have also been trying to assist the leadership of both branches to understand the importance of informing the electorate of its activities and establishing institutions within the government that can branch transitions between elections.  Needless to say, these have been large challenges and we have tackled them with the point of view understanding that these interim governments are just that, interim, that there needs to be a pool, a cadre of skilled professional staff can help establish a strong infrastructure within these branches, for example, like our own Congressional Research Service.  Here is what I can say about the government today in its fledgling democracy.  I'm not going to provide any revelations.  Several of our panelists have made a reference to this.  It's disorganized.  Its activities are chaotic and its operations byzantine in many ways.  The concept of consensus leaves little chance for rank-and-file debate or discussion.  There is little transparency, and every decision becomes a factional dispute.  There are several of the leaders who show a marked sophistication in governing, but the political immaturity of the rank-and-file of INA, for example, as well as many of the staff in the three branches has posed a serious problem.  No matter how politically sophisticated some of the leaders are, if they don't have staff that have the knowledge or tools necessary to communicate or move agendas, not much gets accomplished.  There is no real pool of trained professionals to staff these institutions.  The intergovernmental communications continues to be nonexistent.  The three branches have failed to establish a system of interagency communication, and internal communication within these institutions borders on rivalry.  None of the communications departments within each of these institutions, the INA, the Speaker's Office, the Committee, Public Affairs staff have developed a relationship among themselves and often issue contradictory statements on behalf of the Assembly.  The Constitutional Drafting Committee's activities were not shared internally and more than some, many of the INA members were left in the dark for quite a period of time about what was going on with regards to the Constitution.  Likewise, the coordination and consistency of messages among the Executive Branch offices have been weak.  Add to this the security situation that makes everything hundreds of times more difficult to work in the government and one would say that this is a formula for disaster.  But it's not.  Having described my view of what isn't working, it is important to look on the brighter side.  Considering the social, political and security situation in Iraq, this new democracy has up to a certain point proven surprisingly adaptable and workable.  I want to be clear on this.  You know the most recently change to the constitutional process and the decision to redefine the rules for voting which has been turned around, but the fact that it happened is anything but good.  But over the past months the system has functions, the basic mechanics are up and running, committees are meeting, laws are being passed, a constitutional draft was completed.  The drafters did attempt to gather public opinion and to do some outreach to the broader public on the constitutional process.  Was it transparent?  No.  Was it orderly?  Anything but.  But an imposed deadline was more or less met and there is a draft of a Constitution for the Iraqi public to vote on on October 15th.  That is something to be said about a nation who lived under 35 years of a repressive regime.  Overall I think that there has to be some credit given to the constitutional drafting committee.  While it's not a perfect document by any stretch of the imagination, constitutions are to serve as frameworks, and it took us 11 years to draft ours and it was at the tail end that many of the drafters did not agree with the content of our own Constitution, and Benjamin Franklin at the age of 82 had to persuade them to please move on and to understand that this was a good step for our nation.  Does the new constitutional draft to address these and other problems in the present functionality of the government?  I think Rend has addressed that very well.  But the one thing I do want to point out is that it is going to be in the implementation of the Constitution, and perhaps there is an opportunity to do away with some of the overlapping functions and competition between the branches.  I do want to say something about federalism to follow-up with Qubad's note, and that is we conduct polling and focus groups and it has become clear that the use of the word decentralization rather than federalism receives a much more favorable reaction from the Iraqi public.  I think what needs to happen is that there needs to be a focus on more civic and voter education for the Iraqi public about what federalism is.  Clearly that's something that we are working with Iraqi civil society organizations on.  Finally, I think that we need to recognize that Iraq is a new democracy.  It's new to democratic practices; it's a work in progress; it cannot happen overnight; that the subsequent elected governments are going to be anything but perfect; that Iraq is going to have to go through many cycles of elections and to grow in democratic traditions.  I think we have to have realistic expectations of how far this country has gone in the past 2 years, and I think there has been some progress made.  MS. PLETKA:  Thank you, Judy, very much.  I'd like to turn to Safwat Rashid for his remarks.  MR. RASHID:  Ladies and gentlemen, it is a privilege to address such an elite audience, but according to the draft constitution which some of my colleagues criticized, I have the right to speak in my mother language, but don't be afraid, I wouldn't put that burden on you.  (Laughter.)  MR. RASHID:  I would to try my poor English on you, and it is a very daring by myself especially after Kanan, Qubad and Rend spoke their fluent and best English.  I am a member of the Board of Commissioners of IECI, the Independent Electoral Commission for Iraq.  Luckily I am not talking about politics, so I might not need such a vocabulary, but I am trying to explain what my organization or what my commission is doing.  Most of you are familiar with the IECI as a totally independent electoral commission which has the power by the law to implement elections all over Iraq.  The future of the elections from the IECI perspective is that the Iraqi legislatures in endeavoring to spare the Iraqis of the atrocities and crimes committed by the past regime on Iraqis themselves like waging aggressive wars, using chemical weapons on civilians, creating mass graves, not to be repeated again they worked too hard to find a democratically ruling system to govern the future Iraq through elections which will enable the transition of power to be conducted peacefully without coup d'etat or the like.  The legislators not only adopted this system, but go further behind to recognize an independent body to supervise and implement the election in Iraq as touted before, and it is in the draft constitution that such a body, IECI, will continue to function after the Constitution hopefully will be adopted.  For us that is another certification of the successfulness of the election of January 30, 2005.  We think that the future shape of the government concerning the laws, especially the election laws, will find some change.  The Transitional National Assembly enacted a new election law adopting multiple constituencies based on provinces or governorates and national compensatory seats which enable the electors to steady the candidates of the governorates more closely.  Maybe the future election law even will divide those provinces to a subprovince which will enable the individual candidates to win an election.  In that case, the future Parliaments not necessarily and the government also will be dominated by powerful, big parties.  The IECI is an administration technical body that organizes and conducts the elections by implementing the laws passed by the Parliament and issuing its own regulations based on that.  But frequently our technical advisers have been asked by the legislators and also by political parties how such an article or such a law should be enacted so that it will be practically implemented.  We are trying to be very impartial in that not to be accused that you are siding with this party or another.  For that we are trying to give a very decent legal technical advice.  I hope that some of the facts and figures which I sent before concerning IECI have been distributed to you so that we don't need to enter into the details of our work.  I just want you to know that for the next referendum and election, until now some 52,000 political entities and agents have been registered along with 23,000 observers and 65 international observers from outside Iraq.  We are trying to use new methods even further than what is written in our laws.  Now we are trying to have a totally independent commission of media to plan for the outreach of our organization.  Also we have a totally independent legal panel to tackle the challenges and complaints which we are receiving.  For selecting the employees who should be on the boxes on the day of the referendum or election, their number might reach 20,000 persons, we have chosen this time to select those at random through the electoral roll of their own centers.  By that we passed the let us say dangers of having the influence of political parties and the government on those people.  Thank you again.  (Applause.)  MS. PLETKA:  With that I think we have finished with our panel and we will turn to our audience for questions.  I'm going to ask you to wait for the microphone.  If you would be kind enough, when I call on you to identify yourself and to put your short statement, and let me emphasize short statement, in the form of a question.  With that, I saw you first.  There you go, my friend from the Turkish press.  QUESTION:  (Off mike.)  Just to make something clear, Rend Rahim mentioned in a key article in the Constitution that in the event of an absence of an agreement between the central government and the federal regional government on a subject, the federal regional government's decision rules.  If that's so, what's the point in having the rest of the Constitution and a central government at all in the first place?  MS. RAHIM:  Since you represent the only federal--the question is about laws, and there are actually two articles in the Constitution that refer to this.  One of them is that in the absence of a consensus the decisions of the federated region overrule.  In the case of a conflict between federal law and regional law, then the regional law will prevail in those areas that are not the exclusive prerogative of the central government.  My point was that the areas which are the exclusive prerogative of the central government are so limited and it's not workable, and we are going to have a lot of problems down the line.  MS. PLETKA:  Back here we have a lady who has a question, one of our guests.  QUESTION:  Dr. Katrine Michael from Kurdish Human Rights.  I will ask Dr. Munthir in Arabic.  (Question in Arabic.)  The second question I have to Mr. Safwat.  In Naynoia plain (ph) we have bad experience last election.  How sure you are we aren't going to repeat the same thing?  Thank you.  MR. AL FADHAL:  (Answer in Arabic.)  MR. RASHID:  Naturally some shortcomings happen in those areas for logistics, security and other reasons, but nobody or even the administration there to provide IECI with employees to work on those election centers.  IECI, I am ashamed to say this, was forced to move more than one thousand Iraqis from the central government to Mosul to do its work.  Thank you.  QUESTION:  Michael Youash with the Iraq Sustainable Democracy Project.  Could anyone on the panel comment on what we would see as a strategy to alleviate the Balkanization of Iraq through a robust role for local government?  From the TAL to the draft constitution you saw the removal of insightful clauses such as aggressive decentralization, a more palatable term as well as the IRI has pointed out.  Could anyone comment on why that was not exploited as a good governance measure to allow all people to buy into Iraq and not ever feel marginalized?  To Mr. Sidqi, just to ask again, could you comment on the disenfranchisement in Northeastern governorate, and aside from present observers, what will be done to prevent the minorities in that area such as Chaldo-Assyrians, Turkomans, Shabaks and Yezidis from being disenfranchised again?  MS. PLETKA:  One of the questions is for Safwat.  I don't know who had the other one.  MS. RAHIM:  Danny, I don't think we understood the first question.  MS. PLETKA:  Do you want to clarify the first part of your question again?  QUESTION:  Absolutely.  Could anyone comment on the potential of using local government in the Constitution defined robustly to alleviate the concerns that power has simply shifted from the center to omnipresent regions to prevent that Balkanization.  Shifting power for a robust role to local government would allow all people to feel they could never be marginalized again, but that hasn't happened in the draft constitution.  MR. TALABANY:  I think the federal structure that people have in mind actually takes into consideration local governance.  It's not just the omnipotent regional government.  It's about having a system completely devolving power all the way do to the local town councils.  I think that's the way that things are going to work and we're going to prevent another system from emerging where somebody in Baghdad dictates a policy that is applicable from North to South to East to West, and the greater the level of decentralization that exists in Iraq I think the more likelihood that we are of having the communities of Iraq working together and cohabiting peacefully.  MR. FADHAL:  I'd add to what Qubad said perhaps a warning that the points that Rend made about the lack of clarity between the central government, the failure lies in the issues that are not in the Constitution, the absolute clarity of roles.  Had there been precise mechanisms set out for who was responsible for what and what the checks and balances are of the different parts, the system could very well work with the kind of extreme decentralization that we were all looking for.  But in the absence of those clauses and wit a lot of confusion and with the sole preoccupation being the purely political one to make the center as weak as possible, the result is a very unpromising document from the point of view of the stability of the system that it creates.  Let us face it, this is a profoundly unstable, destabilizing document.  It will not work.  Rend said that.  It will not work.  They will find dozens of ways of modifying it and Parliament will have to come in and so on, and each time they face a concrete problem of the center versus the periphery and who does what and who is responsible for what, you will have to have adjustments and so on made to it.  To some extent, that's true of all constitutions, but ours is a little bit messier than most.  MS. PLETKA:  I'm going to try despite the fact that I don't have swiveling eyes to try and call on people.  Do you want to answer the last part of that question?  MR. RASHID:  There is some which wasn't answered.  To that end, some more logistics and security measures have been adopted.  Also we are in close consultation with the local authorities, the Mosul administration and the Kurdistan regional government to avoid the repetition of those practices.  Thank you.  MS. PLETKA:  There was a gentleman around here.  QUESTION:  Thank you.  Spencer Ackerman from the New Republic.  Kanan spoke of decades of sectarianism with overtones of fratricide, unless I misunderstand you.  Given that, isn't it a mistake to look at the provisions of the Constitution as some sort of improper or flawed procedural grounds as opposed to the establishment of such a fact?  And what if anything at this very, very late hour can be done to prevent this sort of thing or is it simply too late for any sort of Iraqi identity that would be palatable to Iraqi liberals like we see on the panel?  MR. MAKIYA:  The first point of what you said again, Spencer, can you repeat just the first point, the opening sentence, the idea?  QUESTION:  Kanan, unless I misunderstood you, you spoke of the process yielding potentially decades of sectarianism.  Unless I misunderstood you, there are overtures of fratricide within what you had described.  MR. MAKIYA:  Right.  Yes, there is a lot that can be done, but let me phrase what I said a bit differently.  The document that we have now in my view is a patently unworkable document and to the extent that it be made to work, it will work in the direction of fratricide and increasing ethnic and sectarian tensions.  So it was more than a deeply flawed document.  There are really serious issues whether the men and women of principle, how they ought to vote over this document.  But leave that aside.  It's a very difficult question.  If one votes yes on the basis that the stability of the country requires it in spite of the deep failures of the document, this is the dilemma that every democrat and liberal will face today as they confront this question.  But these documents and the focus on this process was all a little bit too much.  Frankly, there are far more important processes at work in the country, and the rushing through of this constitutional process I think was a very big mistake.  Once we saw the direction in which it was going, the community should have been allowed much more time, sometimes to stagnate on issues, sometimes to discuss them at great length to find fora for discussing it in society at large, drag the constitutional process out, not close it, in my opinion.  This of course ran counter to the policy of the Bush administration and it was counter to some of the interests of some of the Iraqi political groups.  The central question behind all of this is the insurgency.  The insurgency is fueling a tension, anger, resentment that will drive the Constitution one way or the other, the constitutional process.  If we want to save the Constitution, we first have to begin by dealing with the insurgency.  That is the central fact of life for the country today.  You can't move from point A to point B if you can't take even a normal taxicab, if you can't even come from the airport down the road.  If 50 to 100 people are being kidnapped, prominent doctors and professionals are being kidnapped every month or so, the numbers are staggering.  I'm not sure that I may be understating them.  You have a situation in which this kind of discussion is operating at the rarified atmosphere far away from the real forces on the ground.  So we can have the discussion, we should have the discussion, but in a calmer and in a different kind of environment.  In such an environment you can work with this document to amend it in dramatic ways to improve it, but it seems to me we don't have that environment the moment, and we don't have the politicians to create that environment.  That is my main point really.  MS. RAHIM:  I of course was not very optimistic about this document, but I think that we should remember in a way because it is so flawed that two things are going to be very important to look at it.  One of them Qubad mentioned, and I want to stress.  The elections in December are going to usher in a 4-year Parliament and a 4-year government.  Because everything is so loose in this Constitution, I disagree with Kanan a little bit in that it can only lead to civil war and fratricidal warfare.  I think a great deal is going to depend on who is Parliament, who is in government and how will they choose to interpret this Constitution.  There is room for interpretation, plenty of room for interpretation and a great deal is going to depend on the next election.  The other thing is it's going to depend on whether the incoming government is going to take the opportunity because of its longevity, its stability theoretically, is going to use this as an opportunity to do what we failed to do over the last 2-1/2 years and that is enter into a real process of national reconciliation and national dialogue.  This process should have happened before the Constitution was written, but we hope that the new Parliament and the new government are going to begin this process that is long overdue.  If all the parties enter into this process in good faith and goodwill, then I do not think we need to descend into this warfare that Kanan alluded to.  MR. MAKIYA:  I think I'll just add very briefly that I think in this sobering statement that the people's sense of identity, Iraqi identity, is somewhat different now than it was prior to this war or maybe just immediately after it.  I think what has pushed people close to thinking of themselves as a Kurd first or as a Shiite first or as a Sunni first is the lack of political security, economic development, and just the general security situation as a whole.  People will seek refuge in what protects them, in what feeds them ultimately.  MS. PLETKA:  I must say I'm a little bit surprised to hear you emphasize the importance of who, not what.  If there's one thing we spent a lot of time on here, it is the importance of institutions and the rule of law rather than the individuals.  This is how we ended up with all the bad people who we have in the Middle East because they're the ones who can fix everything.  We depend on the people and if the structure underlying isn't very good then we're going to be in a lot of trouble when (technical interruption) elected.  MS. RAHIM:  Danny, these people who helped to create the--it's people who build institutions and you have to have the people there to build them.  I don't think we have now.  MS. VAN REST:  I just want to add that again we do conduct polling about once a month in Iraq and the most recent poll showed that more than 50 percent of Iraqis continue to think of them as Iraqis first.  More than 50 percent, about 56 percent, continue to identify as Iraqis first.  MS. PLETKA:  I'm trying to hustle along a little more than I should be.  This gentleman here with a pen.  QUESTION:  (Off mike) from the Syrian Embassy.  In fact, I don't have a question, just an intervention to Mr. Munthir.  MS. PLETKA:  Please keep it short and try to make it sound like a question.  QUESTION:  May I speak in Arabic, please?  MS. PLETKA:  Yes, go ahead.  QUESTION:  (Question in Arabic.)  MR. AL FADHAL:  (Answer in Arabic.)  QUESTION:  Was there in that question a statement of condemnation of acts of terrorism committed in Iraq?  MS. PLETKA:  I don't think so.  Maybe the gentleman would like to have a moment to respond.  Ask in Arabic.  MR. AL FADHAL:  Yes, an official condemnation of all terrorist activities carried out.  QUESTION:  (Question in Arabic.)  MS. PLETKA:  This will probably be a very entertaining digression, but probably not a fair service to our audience.  This gentleman right here, and then I'll try and go around here and come back over there.  QUESTION:  Craig Heinz with the Houston Chronicle.  Is there anyone who has a vote who will vote against the Constitution, or alternatively, is there anyone who thinks it will fail?  MS. RAHIM:  I'm voting yes.  I'm not shy about that.  MR. MAKIYA:  I personally think there is a slight possibility, but it is a minority possibility, depending on how the governorates and the center, how well they organize themselves against it, but they clearly are unexpectedly registering to vote and with a view to opposing it.  So there is a slim chance, very slim, that they might succeed.  Hence the motion in Parliament the day before yesterday to change the rules, and hence the reversal after international condemnation.  MS. PLETKA:  Thank you.  I do have to apologize, we have so many pieces of electronic equipment in this room that it does get a little bit difficult at some moments.  There's a young lady over here who has a question.  QUESTION:  Didad Hassan (ph) from the National Endowment for Democracy.  Actually just to build upon the previous question, there seems to be some understandable optimism for a yes and relatively little discussion of possibilities of a no and the aftermath of a no both here in the United States, but also from public officials in Iraq.  It would seem given the move that was made, and though we're happy to hear it was reversed yesterday, that there's clearly some apprehension that there is a big chance that this Constitution is going to fail.  In that case what are the best steps to continue to consolidate the political process in the case of a no both in terms of a U.S. response to that because there seems to be a lack of peripheral vision on this here in the United States and also in Iraq.  What would be the best response to make sure that if a no happens that we can continue in a positive direction rather than things falling apart?  Thank you.  MR. TALABANY:  (Answer in Arabic.)  I want to add I agree with part of what Dr. Munthir said.  The strongest reason to vote for this constitutional draft that's out there at the moment is that it's failure could lead to the straw that breaks the camel's back on the official unleashing of civil war.  We now have a de facto civil war, but we don't call it that.  We pretend it isn't a civil war.  We cover it up in all kinds of other ways.  If a successful no vote takes place in three provinces with a two-thirds of majority, that could tip the balance in that direction and that is a very serious, a very serious why a person should consider voting for the Constitution.  But how notice how negative it is.  Notice how utterly, utterly without hope or conviction in the nature of the document such a vote would be.  That having been said, there is also the possibility, and here you asked me specifically what should the U.S. administration or other countries do in the event of a no vote, there is also the possibility that it would bring everyone back to the drawing board with a much more concentrated and serious frame of mind, and now sit down and resolve all those contradictions and illogical clauses in the document that leads to the unworkable structure that it is.  That's a slim possibility, but it is also there.  MS. RAHIM:  I want to raise another point or another possibility that I'm concerned about, and that is that the Sunnis will mobilize for a no vote and will do everything they can to overturn this Constitution and will in fact vote no in large numbers and yet will not be able to reverse the Constitution.  In a sense that worries me much more than either a no vote that reverses the Constitution or a yes vote that has a great deal of support from all sectors.  My fear, and I think this is what Iraqis as well as the U.S. administration have to think about, is what happens if you have a very large disgruntled Sunni electorate that voted no but could not make it happen?  This is worrisome.  MS. PLETKA:  We're very near the end of our time.  I'd like to just take one more.  You promise quick?  Yes, a quick, brief question from this gentleman right here.  QUESTION:  I'm Jerry Thompson.  Actually what I want to do is I want to ask Rend's question to the rest of the panel.  I think Munthir Al Fadhal and Judy Van Rest perhaps may have some polling data to speak to that, but that's to my mind a question that must be addressed by the panel and not asked rhetorically.  MS. RAHIM:  I think it's a possibility and it is a worrying possibility that that will be the outcome.  If that happens I think the ball is in the Sunnis' court in how what they will do next.  This in my opinion gives them an opportunity again to mobilize themselves in a way that could turn out for the December elections to make sure that they have the right representation in the Parliament and to be strong enough in the next government that could change things towards their favor.  If they boycott the elections altogether, I think this will be another strategic mistake on the part of those claiming to represent the Sunni communities and that that could lead to further unrest down the road.  MS. PLETKA:  With that I'm going to adjourn this panel and thank our panelists and thank our audience.  Please clap quickly.  (Applause.)  MS. PLETKA:  If everybody would listen to our housekeeping note for a moment, we're going to take a very quick break if we might and move to our next panel on the military and militias, and do keep an ear open for some changes in the schedule at lunchtime.  (Recess.)  (IN PROGRESS.)  -- that recognizes the nature of the enemy and what is required to defeat him.  We need to be prepared for a long-term war; therefore, our necessary starting point is to understand the roots of terrorism in Iraq and the terrorists' methods and means and how to defeat them.  Terrorism is funded, strategically planned, and operationally directed by Ba'athist organizations in Iraq.  There are elements of the former regime, especially the military  (?)  of the Ba'ath Party, the Mohabarat (ph), the  (?)  , Fidayah (ph) Saddam and so on.  It has become clear to us that Ba'athists, through their campaign of terror in Sunni areas, are attempting to hijack the representation of the Sunnis.  It is a big mistake to equate Sunnis with Ba'athists.  Ba'athists are not equal to Sunnis and Sunnis are not equal to Ba'athists.  If we don't make this distinction, we will fall into the trap of exactly what the Ba'athists want.  Therefore, military campaigns to clear Sunni areas from Ba'athists and terrorist elements should be preceded by intensive political and social campaigns and communication to separate Ba'athists from the Sunni population.  This will help us identify and isolate terrorists, and it will avoid the imposition of a catastrophic collective punishment on the Sunnis.  We must work very hard and be very truthful with ourselves not to allow a repeat of another cycle of oppression, this time directed against Sunnis.  Local commanders of the Iraqi Army, security forces, and police must abide by the rules of law.  And we must not confuse our desire to aggressively fight and kill terrorists with punishing an entire population of Sunnis.  Ba'athist terrorists are counting on this issue to create an environment in which Sunnis feel they are oppressed, fueling prospects for a civil war in Iraq.  Another important matter in defeating terrorism is to give every Iraqi a stake in the country.  Ba'athists laid a fear factor on the Sunnis by spreading the idea that the Shia and the Kurds in federal Iraq will take control of oil in their own areas, while leaving the Sunnis in oil-poor areas without a share of this national wealth.  We were able successfully to add a clause to the draft constitution stipulating that oil wealth is to be equally shared by all Iraqis.  Article 109 of the draft constitution says oil and gas is the property of all the Iraqi people in all the regions and governorates.  We are determined to work very hard to legislate equal ownership for all Iraqis, which will be an important way to give the Sunnis a stake in the future of Iraq.  We also have begun a policy of constant and relentless outreach to Sunnis who live specifically in areas where there is extreme tension.  We had a success story in Talafer in which terrorists made a considerable effort, split the city into warring sectarian factions, but they failed.  Both factions were blaming each other, and there was a great deal of confusion.  It became clear to both sides and to us that a few elements of terrorists have created this confusion and dangerous friction.  After the agreement was reached, both sides took the responsibility to publicly announce the agreement and abide by it and isolate the terrorists.  This was followed by a fast plan to restore services and provide rations to the city.  A military campaign followed, which was greatly facilitated by the earlier negotiations and agreement.  Consequently, we were able to minimize the collateral damage and civilian casualties.  It is also important to note that not all Ba'athists are working with terrorists or are terrorists.  Some Ba'athists have accepted the new reality.  But terrorism in Iraq, I repeat, is led by a Ba'athist organization of those who do not want to accept power sharing, who still believe that they can stop the democratic process and monopolize power over Iraq.  Islamists, including Zarqawi's people and criminal elements of the Iraqi society, all function under the umbrella of the Ba'athist there organization.  Syria also plays an important role, training insurgents and facilitating they entry into Iraq through direct coordination with the Ba'ath terror organizations, with Ba'ath operatives crossing between Syria and Iraq to direct terror operations such as in Al-Kahan (ph), Mosul, and other places.  One high-ranking Ba'athist who was captured, and he was wearing the new trendy Ba'athist look, which is a Wahhabi with a short   (?)   and a long beard.  He confessed that suicide bombers come to Iraq and they stay in safe houses waiting for a call with their orders to drive a suicide car.  Evidence also shows suicide bombers' hands tied to steering wheels with chains and their feet tied to the accelerator pedal with duct tape.  Evidence also shows a second car following to detonate the car if the suicide bomber should hesitate.  I want to say a special word about the militias.  We have to provide the proper political and security environment so that people no longer feel the need for the protection of militias.  The Iraqi Army must be open to all Iraqi citizens, and we must not accept militias operating under the flag of the Iraqi Army.  Intelligence is a critical element for success in this war.  Iraqi intelligence must operate and answer fully to the Iraqi Government.  It should address the needs of intelligence penetration, information gathering, and report to and be under the direction of the Iraqi Government.  This is a part of addressing a bigger issue, which is restoring Iraq's full sovereignty.  Sovereignty is not a rhetorical question.  It is, rather, an issue that makes Iraqis more responsible and more effective in fighting terrorism.  That leads us to a central matter--the necessity of organizing the relationship between the U.S. military and the Iraqi military and security forces so that conflicts of perspectives and priorities can be avoided.  Fast response and quick maneuvering of the Iraq units is essential in fighting terrorism.  A legal agreement between the U.S. military and the State of Iraq such as the Status of Forces Agreement, SOFA, will enhance the maneuverability of the rapid response of Iraq units which is necessary to defeat terrorists who have the capability by many accounts of prominent U.S. commanders to maneuver fast and adopt new tactics.  The Iraqi military and security forces should have the capabilities to outmaneuver and outsmart the terrorists.  Conventional  (?)  weapons must not be the basic choice to fight terrorists.  The war against terrorism is not a war of fire power.  It is a war of intelligence and it is a war of social and political engagement before military action.  Frankly, only Iraqis understand enough about their own very complex and intricate society to pursue this goal.  In fighting such brutal terrorists, we should seek to achieve the most advanced and the highest level of training of Iraqi troops.  This training should focus on fast maneuverability and advanced fighting skills.  The Iraqi military includes excellent and brave officers, but they were deprived from learning advanced military technologies and exposure to the latest developments.  We also need to learn modern concepts of command and control, as President Bush said yesterday.  It is critical that we get the best possible training for our officers and soldiers, and the best place for that training is here, the United States.  Therefore, we should take advantage of this historic opportunity to expand our level of cooperation to maximize the number of Iraqi officers and soldiers being trained here.  An increasing number of  (?)  Iraqi military and security forces is not necessarily the answer to fighting terrorism.  What we need now is to enhance the capabilities of the Iraqi military, its training, its weapons, and that Iraqis will be able to stand in the face of terrorism on their own.  As President Bush said, as the Iraqis stand up, the U.S. will stand down.  A capable and successful military force also requires good abilities in the important fields of administration, finance, logistics, and management.  We need intensive and urgent training of a new generation of Iraqi leadership in these matters.  We need a successful Ministry of Defense which can integrate, plan, and control all military efforts throughout Iraq.  A successful MOD will have procurement systems with sufficient oversight procedures to prevent the theft of the money of the Iraqi people.  As you may know, there are reports of astonishing corruption in the previous Iraqi Government.  That money should have been used to fight terrorism, protect soldiers' lives, and enhance our military capabilities, instead of going to dishonest individuals.  This matter is appalling, and it is unacceptable, specifically when we know for a fact that those corrupt monies are invested and banked in a neighboring country to Iraq considered to be a close ally to the U.S.  We cannot be sincere in our efforts to fight terrorism and turn our back to these actions without proper punishment and then restoration of these monies to the Iraqi people.  It has become clear to us that one of the terrorists' highest priority, to attack infrastructure, which will reduce oil exports, which are 97 percent of Iraq's income, and paralyze large cities, specifically Baghdad, in terms of electrical power, water, and fuel.  This terrorist plan was meant to deprive Iraq of necessary funds needed to fight terrorism and undermine the government by showing it is ineffectual, and as a result to undermine the political process.  Therefore, protection of the infrastructure became only a few months one of the top priorities to fight terrorism in Iraq.  In that regard, intelligence became very critical in preventing attacks before they happen, and surveillance such as aerial surveillance came to be very important to detect terrorist actions against infrastructure and delay and thwart them by rapidly bringing Iraqi forces and friendly forces to the scene.  In June, we learned that terrorists were planning to fully cut off electrical power, fuel supply lines, and water to Baghdad during the hot summer.  In spite of the fact that Iraq is producing the highest amount of electrical power since more than a decade, exceeding five million megawatts, due to the intensive terrorist actions we failed to transmit electrical power to Baghdad.  However, the terrorists also failed to cut off power to Baghdad 100 percent as they planned.  The same thing happened to fuel lines to Baghdad, which led us to put restrictions on the number of cars driven in Baghdad to reduce consumption of gasoline.  Since the liberation of Baghdad over two years ago, we and our American friends have been engaged in crucial struggles in the war on terrorism.  On behalf of myself and all Iraqis, I am enormously grateful to the sacrifice and brave and generous Americans who have given so much that my people will live in freedom.  In sum, it is a critical part of the war on terrorism, and winning this war can be achieved by full cooperation between the United States and Iraq.  Thank you.  (Applause.)  MR.           :  Thank you, gentlemen.  We will now take questions.  The ground rules are simple.  Please state your name and affiliation.  Please ensure that you actually ask a question.  And please keep your comments brief.  If you wish to have a specific panel member answer it, please identify that panel member.  QUESTIONER:  I'm Rick Little with the Dallas Morning News, and I'd like to ask all of you to comment on this question, but maybe starting with Mr. Qanbar, who ended his remarks by talking about winning the war.  I think that many people, many Americans don't really know at this point what it would mean to win the war.  What would it look like if the United States side won the war?  And can that be done, do you think, before the steady drip of casualties totally erodes American public support for the effort?  MR. QANBAR:  Winning the war means winning the democratic political process.  Winning the war means the  (?)  of the activities of the terrorists to a great extent, and also to have an Iraqi leadership in Iraq that is fully democratic and allied to the United States.  COLONEL KIENLE:  I certainly could not take issue with that.  It's going to take some time, and I think we've heard that through testimony upon testimony.  It is a long process, longer than months.  It's certainly some years ahead.  And having been there, I think that we will see a fourth build-down measure happen in the not too distant future, much as we heard in testimony this week.  I can only say that having been on the ground, having worked with the Iraqi forces quite extensively, I certainly believe that to be the case, and that transition is in full swing.  That is certainly the word that our military transition teams, our advisers, our support folks understand and use.  And the end state is probably pretty clear to them.  MR. KAGAN:  Let me just add to that.  I do think that we can win this war before the willingness of the American people to continue to fight erodes.  I think that there has been a certain amount of unfortunate promises or suggestions that we would be able to withdraw American forces in large numbers very, very rapidly.  I think that's unlikely.  I think that the Bush administration at this point could probably best help itself by having a more measured evaluation of what that process is actually going to be like.  I think we've started to see happen in the recent testimony.  I think the most important issue is that the American people will continue to support the war as long as they believe that we will win.  That is the historical precedent.  The American people are willing to bear many, many sacrifices, even sacrifices that appear to be altruistic--although I don't think this is one.  This is something that America has to do for itself as much as for Iraq.  But I think as long as the American people have confidence that victory will come, they will bear the burden.  I think if that confidence starts to erode seriously, then we will start to have problems.  I should add also wait for the microphone to come, as the gentleman did, before beginning your presentation.  Please.  QUESTIONER:  Maurice  (?)   , Middle East Media Research Institute.  I have a question to Colonel Kienle.  As with many U.S. offensives on different cities in Iraq, it seems to me like many insurgents slip away beforehand.  Does this mean that there is a significant infiltration of the insurgents within the Iraqi new military?  That's the question to you.  To Entifadh Qanbar, after hearing so much about Syria and its involvement with the insurgency, does the reason of not closing the borders with Syria have anything to do with strategic decision by weighing what's the result of that, it would be more hurting to the Iraqi people from economic point of view than keeping this flow of insurgents coming in?  What I am saying is that it seems like the economic reasons were the main thing of supplying oil from Syria, supplying food and so on, that came to the conclusion of the Iraq Government to leave the situation as is, just calling upon Syria not to allow insurgents to come in.  COLONEL KIENLE:  Let me quickly address the infiltration.  I don't think the infiltration is significant.  I am not sure I know what measure significant would be.  I do know it exists.  I can tell stories about cases where our actions which we thought were fairly close hold certainly got into the hands of the insurgents.  I also know that having sat at the edges of Fallujah last October, there was no surprise about what was about to happen there.  It didn't take a well-trained eye to understand force buildup.  So how much of it is infiltration and how much of it is just what we would call bad operational security and guarding our movements better, I don't know.  I can't measure the infiltration, and I'm not sure who could.  I would be a fool to deny that it exists, and we do our best to contain it, with the hope that folks who serve in the military start to take on the values--and perhaps that's a bit optimistic, but we see it.  They understand what the goals of the military are.  There is the brotherhood of arms, which S.L.A. Marshall said is why men fight, they start to establish friendships and understand they're part of something greater than themselves.  So, in short, it exists.  I'm not sure the level, that I would call it significant.  It is a problem, and it's something that we need to work around.  MR. QANBAR:  On the issue of Syria, we see the results of it.  We have confessions of many captured Syrian intelligence officers.  We know that high-ranking Ba'athists such as   (?)  Hamid is in Syria and operating between Syria and Iraq, and so are other top leaders of the Ba'ath Party.  We don't know much about the penetration through the Syrian border for the simple reason we don't--the Iraqi intelligence does not report to the Iraqi Government.  The Iraqi intelligence is not--we don't know where it is funded from.  There is not even appropriation to the current Iraqi intelligence.  So it's a mystery to us.  It's like a black box.  They operate on their own.  I don't know if they spy for the government or on the government sometimes.  So that's why I was touching on the issue of sovereignty.  MR. KAGAN:  Please wait for the microphone.  QUESTIONER:  I would like the estimation of all the members of the panel of the numbers of insurgents.  What's your best guess?  Inside the army itself, what are the real numbers that people are talking about and how many groups?  And their finance, is it largely--where is it coming from?  Have they used up the finance that they robbed from the banks just before the war?  Are they being supplied from the outside?  And if so, through where?  And also how many of them are coming in through--what's your judgment on the percentage, let's say, that are coming through the Iranian border as opposed to those coming through the Syrian border?  We know those two areas.  Do you have a sense of that distribution?  Thank you.  I would like all panelists, if they could shed insight on those questions.  MR. KAGAN:  I think if we knew the answers to those questions, the insurgency would be about done.  COLONEL KIENLE:  The other part of that answer is if I knew the answers, I probably couldn't say them in this forum.  And that's an awful answer.  I understand that.  I can anecdotally say, again, having walked the ground, and many of them after some of the combat actions, that the Iraqi forces were quick to point out to me the number of foreign fighters that they could find in the casualties, whether it be Fallujah, Samarra, Mosul, or other places where we had combinations of multinational and Iraqi forces together.  I wish I knew what the funding was.  We spoke earlier today--if I could determine what all the decisive points are toward that center of gravity, I would be down in Tampa sitting at the right hand of General Abizaid and whispering in his ear.  I just don't have those answers.  I wish I knew the answers.  The only thing I can say is there's a lot of folks working those answers.  But they're hard, and that's the nature of the insurgency.  What I will say is what did amaze me more and more was the amount of opportunists.  Someone who has buried a backyard full of 155 millimeter artillery rounds, are they an insurgent or are they merely an opportunist who knows that they'll either go to the highest bidder or they'll turn in the location for a reward?  That was something totally new to me.  So when we classify folks as insurgents, as terrorists, we get into some semantics.  But it's just tough to put a number around that.  Not probably the answer you want, but as good an answer as I can give.  MR. QANBAR:  On the issue of how many terrorists, I share the Colonel's--we don't know much of how many--I personally don't know.  Maybe some other people know that.  But I would say the hard-core ones are probably several thousands.  But there are operatives who--some of them gun for hire and some of them foreigners, which probably would not exceed more than 5 percent of the total number.  The foreigners mostly, you know, execute the suicide bomber stuff and others.  But the vast majority of the Iraqi insurgency are Iraqis.  On the issue of how much there is from Syria versus Iran, I think it's much--I mean, the terrorism that I know about is coming from Syria.  I personally don't know much of the terrorism coming from Iran.  I mean, I know there is--the Iranians are working on the political process more than on the terrorist process.  MR. KAGAN:  I think it's important to think about the context within which that sort of question is asked.  And I think that we can too easily focus on trying to quantify the challenge that we face.  And the reason why that's a dangerous thing to do is, first of all, you can't.  I mean, we'll know what the number is as the number approaches zero.  Until we get there, we won't really know.  But then you really need to ask the question of what are you counting.  The only number that would really be meaningful is how many insurgents are there who are really hard-core, committed insurgents who are willing to die rather than give up their cause and know that from the get-go.  That's probably a fairly small number.  But that isn't really very important.  What matters is how many people are there who can be swayed to the insurgent side enough to undertake attacks on coalition forces or Iraqi forces?  How many people are there who can be swayed to the insurgent side to shelter insurgents who do that?  How many people are there who can be swayed to the insurgent side not to report insurgent activities that they know that are going on?  And there are no meaningful numbers for that because that changes every day, and it changes depending on a lot of different conditions in the country, including political participation of the insurgent populations, including the security situation, the danger that people feel from the insurgents if they report them, the danger that they feel from coalition forces if they don't report the insurgents.  There are many, many variables that go into that, and it's not a number that would ever--that you could ever get, because a lot of the time people don't know what side they're on until they actually have to choose.  And so we really should be very careful, I think, trying to track these numbers in any important way.  I think the bottom line is that the population we're aiming at is the population of people who are not hard-core insurgents, who need to be persuaded not to support the insurgents in anyway.  And I think that that has to have to components.  First of all, it has to have a political component to show those people that their interests will be better served by participating in the political process than they will be by supporting violent solutions.  And I think it has to have a military and police component to show them that supporting violence is an extremely dangerous thing to be doing and not something that you want to do if you actually want to see any future for yourself.  So it's a very long answer, an oblique answer to the question, but I think we really need to be careful not to fall into the trap of looking for insurgents to hit.  MR.           :  Will  (?)-truda, Columbus School of Law.  My question is for Mr. Qanbar.  You have presented a scenario of the insurgency as being not a Sunni insurgency, not primarily a Salafist insurgency, but a Ba'athist insurgency.  In view of that, why do you think that the capture of Saddam and the elimination of his sons Uday and Qusay did not have the desired effect of breaking the morale of the insurgents?  MR. QANBAR:  That exactly proves my point, because there is an organization there.  It's not only one person.  There is an organization there, well set, well prepared for.  All documents reveal that Saddam has a post-war plan for insurgency, and he had even prepared for a Syrian relationship for a logistical depth to facilitate and train his Ba'athists there.  Ba'athists now are looking like Wahhabists.  They don't look like Ba'athists anymore.  They don't wear the green uniforms they used to wear.  Now they're all--they call themselves Amir and Abu something.  But he was a few years ago a branch member of the Ba'ath Party with a name.  And I can tell you, this is--we saw that on the ground.  On the recent attack on al-Kayim (ph), when the local tribal head and the local tribe, al-Bumahel (ph), and al-Kayim were calling for help to expel the Zarqawi people who are entering the city, we got intelligence there were about 12 people leading this effort; 11 of them were  (?)   and above.  But they all now look Wahhabist.  Ba'athists are known about this.  In 1976, Saddam also became a communist.  He was praising Lenin in the media.  He made alliance with the communists to kill them after a few months.  So they have the capability to adapt, but it's not an ideology.  It's more of a methodology.  And that's what's the danger about it.  QUESTIONER:  My question is for Mr. Qanbar.  Carol O'Leary, American University.  Would you just elaborate on your comment about the Iraqi intelligence and whom do they work for?  (Laughter.)  MR. QANBAR:  I don't know.  All I know is that the budget appropriation for the Iraqi Government which was set in the National Assembly, the Iraqi parliament, did not include a budget for Iraqi intelligence.  We don't know whom they report to.  We don't know who funds them.  We have no idea what they're doing.  We have some clues they spy on some Iraqi officials, and we also hear that in their internal memos they call the insurgency "the resistance," this kind of thing.  And we also know that there are some notorious former intelligence officers of the former Iraqi intelligence who are holding prominent positions in this organization.  That's all I know.  But whom they report to, where do they get their money from, you should know better.  QUESTIONER:  Ann Hiter (ph) of the National Strategy Center.  This is for the colonel.  I commend you for your work.  Very tough job.  The question is:  You gave us really impressive figures about the units being trained.  When is this going to translate into securing the country for Iraqis?  Then, secondly, part of the transition to democracy is that these troops have to be trained on the rule of law.  On your website for the multinational task force, there doesn't seem to be mention of that.  Can you comment on that as well?  Thank you.  COLONEL KIENLE:  I think if we step foot in Iraq, if we watch closely what's happening--and, fortunately, you mentioned the Multinational Security--the MNSTC-I website.  Let me, if I could, reach back--and this really isn't a setup thing here to say how good the public affairs section works there.  But those who want to get some good news about what Iraqi security forces are--and I promise this is a short commercial--would look to the adviser.  The adviser is on the Multinational Security Transition Command-Iraq website, and it tells a lot of good news, as one would expect.  But it certainly shows a transition that is in full bloom.  It certainly shows successes that are being accomplished by Iraqi security forces.  They are not yet ready to take the lead in all operations, absolutely not, and it will take time.  But if you're looking for those instances, for those vignettes, those anecdotes of where it's happening, I would advise folks to go ahead online and do this, and the pictures are pretty good, too.  The second part of that is the rule of law is a part of the Iraqi training.  It has been hard for us to have an equivalent to our Code of Military Justice because the Code of Military Justice is based on--in the case of our comparison, our own nation, is based on our Constitution from which laws derive and stem.  And so the Iraqi Code of Military Justice equivalent is really something set by lawyers in the MOD, which works okay.  But as far as the rule of law, the humanitarian conduct of warfare, the law of land warfare, it is instilled in the training.  I can tell you that the training is at least as good as my soldiers at Fort Jackson got in terms of the law of land warfare.  You could question how good that training was.  A lawyer would come in and talk to my basic trainees in our own army and present an overview of that.  The same is done.  The other part of that is the actions of the army units are being constantly monitoring by their advisers, the military transition teams, at least ten per battalion, brigade, and division set, and that is across all ten divisions, the Isaf (?), and there's advisers as well with the police organization.  So there's at least somebody whispering in their ear about what's proper conduct and what's not.  I hope that gets to the root of that, but the successes, again, they're published, they're pretty good.  MR. KAGAN:  I'm actually going to follow on to that to make a point that frequently gets lost here.  One of the best ways to train indigenous forces in understanding the rule of law and how to function in a democracy is simply to have them operate very closely with American soldiers.  American soldiers have internalized these principles so deeply and also so self-consciously--it's not just reflex.  They really do understand these principles and their importance, and they transmit them as naturally as breathing to other forces that they interact with.  And it is a fairly organic process that goes on because trainees naturally tend to orient on their trainers, and they tend to model themselves on their trainers, at least when the trainers are good.  And the simple presence of a large number of American soldiers operating closely with Iraqi units and Iraqi units operating and being collocated with American units, you have a lot of de facto training that is unofficial that's not scheduled training.  It just happens that way.  And I make this point because I think as we talk about withdrawing American forces rapidly, pulling out, turning over to the Iraqis, we run the risk of diluting this extremely important and valuable part of the training, and if we don't think about replacing it with something else, I think we run serious risks.  So it's yet another factor to be taken into consideration when we think about the likely length of stay of American forces in Iraq and what purposes they're actually serving there.  COLONEL KIENLE:  Just very quickly to pile on that as well, it's amazing to me how quickly the Iraqis start to emulate their coalition trainers, and I say coalition because the Australians and the Brits play a very big part alongside with us in that.  They exactly do that.  The old expression--and pardon me because it's trite, but an old military expression is, "Follow me and do as I do."  And that's what we see happening pretty regularly.  MR. KAGAN:  We have time for a couple more questions, I think.  In the back there.  QUESTIONER:  Sana Joffrey (ph) with the Wilson Center.  In the wake of the surge of violence against the Shias that we've seen in the recent days, what are you doing to make sure that the Shia military, such as the Mahdi Army and the Badr forces, don't respond in violence to these incidents?  MR. QANDAR:  Political engagement, talking to all parties, trying to mediate between--there were some clashes, as you may be aware, between the Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigade or the Badr headquarters.  All prominent Iraqi politicians I know offhand, Dr. Ahmed Chalabi, President Jalal Talabani, did their job and we were able to defuse the problem very quickly.  The issue of the militia is the issue of feeling insecure, feeling you need to protect yourself.  If you feel that the Iraqis start to see jobs, start to see a viable political process, if they see an accountable government, this will disappear.  But as I said, every Iraqi citizen is welcome to enter the Iraqi Army, but not a whole militia under the flag of the Iraqi Army.  COLONEL KIENLE:  Local commanders on the ground use their civil affairs teams, establish interlocutors, communications goes on to the extent that it can, and there's a whole litany of diplomacy at all levels, if you would, that goes on to try and defuse those situations, routinely spoke with brigade commanders on the ground who had sectors throughout the country that the local sheikhs were folks that they knew very well, that the occasion to have chai (ph) with the local sheikh and discuss exactly what's going on and how to influence it is a regular occurrence that folks in uniform may not know how to do before they get to Iraq, but they sure do learn pretty quickly.  MR. KAGAN:  I think with that we'll wrap this up.  I'd just like to make a couple of comments.  This is an enormous challenge, as I said at the beginning.  This is a terrifically hard thing to do.  And I think that it is in many respects going amazingly well.  We do face an insurgency.  It is significant.  It is challenging.  And defeat is always possible.  On the other hand, we have beaten this military--the military challenge in this insurgency down to a very, very low level.  In that respect, it looks nothing, in no way like Vietnam or like the Soviet war in Afghanistan.  You do not have large-scale guerrilla operations.  You really don't have to run operations at all.  You fundamentally have a terrorism campaign going on.  That is a threat.  It can definitely, if left unchecked, metastasize.  It's a terrible tragedy, and it could derail the Iraqi process.  On the other hand, if you rank this in the scale of historical insurgencies, we are doing pretty well.  I think that a large part of the feeling of unhappiness and malaise that exists in the United States today comes from the fact that we entered this in a very Pollyanna-ish sort of way.  We entered this with excessively high expectations for how rapidly we would be able to do this and how smoothly it would go.  And I think that if we had had more realistic expectations to begin with, we would see the many reasons that we have now to be pleased with the way that things are going.  I think we need to understand that it is a long road ahead, and it is not going to be a smooth road.  Also, I am personally not convinced that we are following 100 percent the correct strategy for dealing with this insurgency.  But I think that there is very good prospect for success if we will stay the course and not be distracted by our own disappointment and our own expectations.  Thank you very much.  (Applause.)  MS. PLETKA:  Before everybody gets up, I'd like to just first of all invite everybody to stay for lunch with us; and, second of all--I ran up the stairs--announce a slight schedule change.  We're going to move back our 3:15 panel--I'm going to talk to the panelists afterwards--in order to make time for General David Petraeus, who's going to join us to talk about Iraq and some military issues.  He'll be with us at 3:30.  I really apologize.  I'm not in good shape.  But thank you.  Enjoy your lunch, and we will make a proper announcement about this later.  (Luncheon recess.) AFTERNOON SESSION  MR.           :  -- and this panel's going to be on the role of religion, which I can say, I think it is fair to say is one of the most misunderstood issues probably in Washington, D.C., about Iraq.  I think when you have writers at very thoughtful publications like the New Republic that refer to Grand Ayatollah Sistani as, in fact, being a "would-be theocrat," it is evidence of a certain lack of information and historical perspective.  But I think that is, in fact, quite typical of many conversations you can have in Washington about the role of Islam in Iraqi society.  I am very pleased to have on this panel Sheikh Afeef Uddin Al-Gaylani, who is pretty well known.  He's the head of the Darul Qadriyah, which is, if I may say so, it's sort of a--it's a large Sufi organization, and he is an expert in Tasawwuf and Fiqh, which is Islamic law.  I am also very pleased to have on the panel Sama Hadad, who is the spokeswoman for the Iraqi Prospect Organization, a pro-democracy group in Baghdad.  And, by the way, I can also mention that if you haven't seen it, in the handouts there's a very good article by her called "The Development of Shi'i Islamic Political Theory."  It's quite good and it's a very good, short, little primer.  I'm also very pleased to have Ghanim Jawad, who is the director of the Culture and Human Rights Office at the Khoei Foundation in London.  For those of you who don't know, the Khoei Foundation is a very important Shi'ite organization outside of Iraq.  The one in London is probably the most important.  It's named after Grand Ayatollah Khoei, the late Grant Ayatollah who was probably the most productive mentor/teacher of Shi'ite clerics in the 20th century.  And I'm also pleased to have Zainab Al-Suwaij, who is the co-founder and executive director of the American Islamic Congress, which is a post-September socialist activist organization--I wouldn't have actually put it that way--based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  She is also an Iraqi by birth and fled Iraq in 1991.  And with that, I would like to turn to Sheikh Gaylani.  SHEIKH AL-GAYLANI:  (Arabic) .  Dearest distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon to all of you.  I would like to thank our gracious hosts, AEI, for organizing this conference.  Iraq really needs a positive view for the future, and even more, I thank AEI because they did this conference while others who are more  (?)-cated by the outcome do nothing, such as the countries around Iraq.  And, finally, I thank AEI for giving me the chance to be a speaker at this conference, and my prayer is for the greatest success for the conference because success in this is very important not only for Iraq but also for peace and progress in the region.  This will have a big impact on the Muslim nation and the global community as well.  So I wish to say to AEI all the best.  Ladies and gentlemen, an ancient Chinese proverb says, "Asking the right question is more than half of the solution."  This brings me to our topic today, namely, the role of religion in remaking Iraq.  The role of religion in the state has always been a difficult subject throughout history, and it remains a difficult question in the new Iraq.  The answer to this question needs a properly informed view of the role that Islam plays in all aspects of society.  The concept of an Islamic state is very great when we are ready for it.  I said it's very great when we are ready for it, because to fail is unthinkable.  We must be sure of success, and to be sure of success, three main pillars must be in place and these are:  the law, which we name it Shariya; the justice, the scholars, or the Islamic religion scholars that we say--which we name them al-alamah (ph); the informed consent of the people, that is the third one.  First, there must be the law, as we said.  By this I mean the religion code, the religious code which comes down to us mostly from the Holy Koran and the traditions of the Holy Prophet, peace be upon him.  And this includes the very extensive body of Islamic jurisprudence(?), developed under various schools of thought throughout the ages.  And this last needs to be constantly updated to reflect change in the times.  These updates demand well-educated scholars.  The jurist (?) alamah--so if I want to mean--if I say al-alamah, that means scholars.  And that is the second pillar now.  After the law--we said the law is the Holy Koran for the Muslims, and the  (?)  of the Holy Prophet, and the  (?)  of the alamah, the scholars, to all of this.  So that will lead us to the second pillar, which is the most important.  Here is the most important issue in this topic:  the Islamic religious scholars, which in Islam are called the alamah, as I mentioned.  As explained above, the alamah interpret the law for the people.  They decide what is acceptable and what is not.  So under an Islamic state, the alamah will find themselves in a position of ultimate power.  This leads us to some serious questions.  Are the alamah, the scholars, educated enough to fulfill the role?  Second, do they fully understand the role Islam plays in modern society?  Third, what are their plans for the system and the constitution?  Fourth, how are we to define the scope of Islamic law under an Islamic constitution?  Is to cover all aspects of human society?  Or is it to be restructured to regulating basic matters such as marriage, divorce, inheritance, et cetera?  Thinking of recent history, how are we to assure fair treatment for all--men and women alike?  For example, in some Islamic countries today, women are not permitted to drive a car, or their work choices are very limited.  That is around an Islamic world.  What is a good relationship between--that is number six.  What is a good relationship between the alamah and the followers?  Is it simply for the benefit of the alim (?)  rather than the benefits of the people?  Do they follow him--I mean the people, they follow the alim--blindly without question and he makes the judgment only?  So we need an equipoised alim to show the true balanced nature of Islam as a united, fair, and merciful religion.  And they must search for the common ground among all parties to ensure peaceful co-existence, and they must  (?)   all differences such as this between the Shi'a and Sunni Muslims in order to make the people happy.  The true responsibility of the alamah is to provide an informed link between the law and the people, which is the third pillar.  So we see from this that the alim, they are--the alamah, the scholars, they are the people who have the power to decide--or to link between the law and between the people.  The people, we must realize that the success or failure of efforts here will be felt most by the people.  They will feel that only.  It is mandatory that we succeed.  We must succeed if we want to do it in a proper way.  The support of the people must be for the long term and not simply short term because of a blind love for the local leader.  Do they really want Islam for Islam's sake?  Do they really know what an Islamic state will mean for them?  Are they fully aware of the cultural and social impact of this decision?  And to what extent do the people understand the rule of religion in their modern life?  The answers to each of these questions may not be certain, but the answer to the whole set is it lies in Iraq unity among all groups in Iraq.  I would argue that important pointers(?) can be found within the region, the region's own history, the regions of our own history.  Let us go back to a glorious Baghdad of another time and age.  The intention of this journey is not one of self-pity; rather, it is to search for  (?)  towards building a tolerant and progressive society.  After all, this was an era  (?)  progress in all areas of human development.  As we all know, such progress can only be sustained under a tolerant regime.  There needs to be allowances for differing and even controversial points of view for society to continue to develop.  How could our forefathers engender an environment able to bring forth spiritual humanists such as   (?)  Jalani (ph), Iman al-Rasali (ph), and countless others?  How did religions and spiritual scholars of such eminence interact and/or influence societal attitudes towards secular learning?  Were the links of  (?)-sina, al-Razi, and al-Jabrain(ph) discriminated?  How was it that scholars of secular sciences were welcomed with open arms and revered regardless of their race or religion?  These are not my opinions only; rather, they are independently documented and researched facts about the Baghdad of yesteryears.  So Islam has always been a religion of tolerance, following the instruction of the Holy Koran and the Holy Prophet, peace be upon him, and supported by the sincere, educated, and modern alims.  Without a creative exercise of this tolerance, the diverse cultures and people could not have been engaged and eventually assimilated into the nation.  Islam sought to cut and  (?)  to eliminate the negative and encourage the positive of the societist(?) is absorbed.  Muslims are encouraged to judge the difference of opinion,  (?)   and  (?)  as expressions of the laws, creative power, not to maim and destroy in the name of purification.  In conclusion, therefore, the ultimate objective of reconstructive process is to be built a progressive, pluralistic, and modern Iraq given the hopes of the people.  This needs to be done within an Islamic framework.  The present certain challenges, which are--the present certain challenges, which are, first, coming up with a framework acceptable to all sects.  Scholars able to  (?)  point and implement religious codes in line with the people's accept  (?)   and catering to the demands of modern times, and the third one, an informed and confident populace that can make intelligent choices.  These challenges require careful and informed deliberations.  Studies need to be made of the challenges and choices made by other countries that have impact upon this path.  Lessons can and should be learned from success, such as, for example, the Malaysian experience, where a good balance has been established between the secular and the religious, and the religious side of daily life.  It is only through an inclusive national debate that we can arrive at the right mix for Iraq.  This is essential if we are to build a bright and lasting future for all Iraqis.  (Applause.)  MR.           :  Thank you, Sheikh Gaylani.  I should note--I should have done it earlier in the little historical introduction--that Tasawwuf Sufism has really been the engine for social assimilation in the Islamic world and the expansion of the Islamic world since the 10th century.  And though I won't allow questions now, not even my own, concerning Iraq, it would be interesting to know later Sheikh Gaylani's view of whether Sufism is, in fact, an effective engine inside of Iraq to counter the spread of Salafism, Wahhabism, and I'll ask him that later.  I just want to make a quick couple of administrative notes.  First is that General Petraeus will be talking to us today.  He is head of training in Iraq, and he will speak to us we think roughly around 3:30.  This will entail a slight shift in the schedule, and we will push back the last panel on rights in the new Iraq to probably around 4:15.  So just be aware of that.  I'd like to pass the speaker over to Ghanim Jawad.  The floor is yours.  MR. JAWAD:  Thank you very much.  First of all, I would like to thank the Institute for this opportunity.  Second, if you will allow me, ladies and gentlemen, to express the  (?)   view in my language, in the Arabic language.  (Speaks Arabic.)  (Applause.)  MR.           :  Thank you very much, and I'll pass now to Sama Hadad, and we may have to be just a little quicker here to allow time for questions at the end.  Thank you.  MS. HADAD:  Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.  First of all, thanks to the hosts for inviting me to speak on their conference today -- (tape ends.)  (In progress) --we're going to be going through the salient points from the essay, and the reason that drove me to write the essay on that particular topic was the strong showing in the January 2005 elections in Iraq's first-ever genuine democratic elections which proved their majority in the country and their importance in the construction of a new state.  In the drafting of the constitution they were also a majority in the drafting committee, and for Iraq to become a beacon of democracy in the Middle East, it will need to be done through the Shia Islamists rather than despite them.  How could Islam be compatible with democracy?  Some argue that it can't, and some argue that it can, but I would argue that compatibility is not good enough because compatibility does not equate with necessity.  If it were only compatibility that was important, then theoretically Islamists would use democracy as a tool to gain political power and then if they wished to they woudl discard it.  So if democracy is to succeed, then it needs to be an integral part of Islam and not simply compatible.  To understand whether or not democracy is an integral part of Islam we have to leave the superficial arguments surrounding this topic and delve a bit deeper into the details of Shia Islamic political theory.  In the interests of time I'll skip over the early historical aspects of Shia political theory, but I would just mention that from the point of the occultation of their final imam in the 10th century A.D. up until about the 20th century, there was a belief that Shia should not concern themselves with politics or government.  But I'll pick it up from the latter half of the 20th century when Shia Islam saw the development of two very opposing political theories that have had an unparalled influence on the Shia Islamic political landscape.  The first, and I'm sure a lot of you are familiar with it, is the "rule of the jurisprudent," which was theorized by Rohollah Khomeini of Iran; and the second, which a lot of people are not familiar with, is what as known as "rule of the people," by Mohammad Bakr al-Sadr, who happens to be the great uncle of Moqtadir al-Sadr, but is clearly of a different breed.  The basis of Khomeini's "rule of the jurisprudent," he believed that the legitimacy of an Islamic government during the occultation was derived from the religious scholars.  And so religious scholars, he believed, were the rightful representatives of God on earth.  In contrast to Khomeini's theory, Mohammad Bakr al-Sadr challenged that simplistic approach and presented a more in-depth and comprehensive idea of how a modern-day Islamic state should function.  He used his mastery of Koranic exegesis and was able to extrapolate two concepts from the Koran.  The first is what is known as "man as the trustee of God," and the second is "prophets as witnesses."  So the two concepts are  "governance" and "supervision."  So the first concept, "governance," al-Sadr stated, is a right given to the whole of humanity, and he explained that it's an obligation given from God to the human race.  He also stated that the legitimacy of government in an Islamic state comes from the people and not from the religious scholars.  He argued that in order to practically implement the concept of "governance," an Islamic state required the establishment of a democratic system whereby the people regularly elected their representatives in government.  And it's a point very much championed by him, to his final days, in fact.  Now, all Islamists, Shia and Sunni, agree that absolute sovereignty belongs only to God, but up until al-Sadr's "rule of the people," Islamists argued, as Khomeini, that legitimacy is passed down from God to the religious scholars to rule over mankind.  However, al-Sadr argued that authority is handed from God not to scholars but to the people.  And according to his theory of "rule of the people," the legitimacy of government is not derived from how religious a government is, but in fact from the will of the people.  And if the government of a particular country is very much there because of the will of the people, then that is how it is conceived to be an Islamic state or not.  Unlike other Islamic thinkers who saw democratic elections as possibly a means to power, which could then be done away with, al-Sadr viewed them as an essential mechanism for the proper implementation of Islamic state, and for him, democracy had a theological basis and was a cornerstone for the practical application of "rule of the people."  Now, unfortunately, Mohammad Bakr al-Sadr was executed by Saddam before he could delve deeper into how the second concept of "supervision" can be practically applied in an Islamic state.  And most of the Iraqi Islamic thinkers escaped from Saddam's Iraq to Iran, where the revolutionary authorities were censoring or banning any group from challenging the concept of "rule of the jurisprudent."  And because of that, this prevented Mohammad Bakr al-Sadr's concept of "rule of the people" of basically being extended or further delved into.  The overthrow of Saddam's regime on April 9, 2003, was actually 23 years to the day of al-Sadr's execution.  I believe that that not only liberated Iraqis from Saddam, but in fact from the strong hold that Iran had on them.  Now, more recently, in the drafting of the constitution there has been a fear, certainly a fear with me, as to which direction Iraq's Islamists would go.  Would they go towards Khomeini's "rule of the jurisprudent," which has been rammed down their throats for a couple of decades, or would they return to al-Sadr's "rule of the people"?  I'm glad to say that, so far, whether it's by intention or just due to international pressure or whatever, the general drift of Iraq Islamists has been towards al-Sadr's "rule of the people."  This would imply, in theory, a growing impetus, at least among the political elite, for an Islamic state, where democracy is founded in theology and is not a mere tool to achieving power.  But the fact of the matter is that a lot of Iraqi Islamists don't really know where they stand on this and they haven't given it a lot of thought.  Now, as far as the constitution is concerned, the decades-old unanswered question remains:  How does one implement the second concept of "supervision"?  Will its application tip the scales toward "rule of the jurisprudent" or will it tip the scales toward "rule of the people"?  Will its application--I actually believe its application can tip the balance either toward liberty or toward authoritarianism.  So it's quite important.  There's a range of possible options of how the concept of "supervision" can be practically applied.  These can either embody al-Sadr's respect for liberty and freedom or distort his "rule of the people" concept into something more akin to the practice in Iran.  I'd like to present two possible options of how the concept of "supervision" can be implemented in Iraq.  I'd like to call the first one "constitutional supervision" and the second "nonconstitutional supervision."  "Constitutional supervision" would suggest that Islamic scholars are appointed to the judiciary to serve in the supreme federal court and are tasked with overseeing that executive decisions by the government and laws passed by parliament don't contradict Islamic teachings.  Such a setup, it is argued, will be a straightforward implementation of al-Sadr's concept of "supervision."  Unfortunately, amongst the Shia and the National Assembly's Constitutional Committee this is a popular option.  However, I don't particularly think it's a good idea.  Proponents of the concept believe that this is the only practical way of both implementing "supervision" and establishing a mechanism for guaranteeing the clause in the constitution that states "No law can be passed that contradicts the undisputed rules of Islam."  They believe that an ordinary judge would not know--is not an expert on Islamic law and would therefore not be able to make a decision as to whether or not laws are contradicting Islam.  However, I believe that this would not only be a blow to Iraq's democratization, but arguably would also be greatly damaging to the independence of Iraq's religious seminaries, otherwise known as the hausa.  Politicizing the hausa will create several problems.  Firstly, there will be problem of definitions.  Who is and who is not qualified to be a religious scholar?  Al-Sadr himself--Mohammad Bakr al-Sadr, that is--had many who disputed his credentials as a religious scholar.  Even the great scholar Abu al Qasim al-Khoei, the most prominent mujja of the late 20th century, had scores of scholars who disputed his status.  Therefore, it will become a political decision as to whether or not someone is judged to be qualified and will be very much a decision that is made in Baghdad.  The politicization of the religious establishment will mean that decisions on who is allowed to climb the hierarchical ladder in the hausa is not going to be based on merit but in fact on politics.  It will undoubtedly create a self-sustaining group who will dominate Iraq's constitutional court and religious establishment.  Placing the role of "supervision" at the top of the country's hierarchy, I believe, will actually contradict al-Sadr's bottom-up approach.  Al-Sadr's "rule of the people" is very much a bottom-up approach.  You allow the religious elite as much freedom as ordinary people, and they are free to educate to the people who are then free to make their own decisions.  So it's a very much a bottom-up approach, rather than Khomeini's imposed laws and then, hopefully at some point, people will grow accustomed to these laws--very much a top-down approach.  Finally, and arguably most importantly, this solution is essentially an authoritarian vision, one that is incompatible with what al-Sadr espoused, which is freedom, liberty, and democracy, and it makes a mockery of "rule of the people."  Now the second option, the "nonconstitutional supervision," simply put, means that by the sheer fact that the constitution enshrines key human rights, it will guarantee the implementation of "supervision" by the maraja and hausa by allowing the religious scholars, like Sheikh al-Sistani, to speak freely, just like ordinary Iraqis.  They'll be able to act as "witnesses," otherwise known as "supervisors."  If they believe that the people are going astray, they can guide them through reason and debate, and then it's up to the people to decide whether or not to follow them.  This was actually demonstrated beautifully during the tenure of the CPA.  Sistani demanded that there be national elections to select a transitional government and the drafters of the constitution.  His followers then believed in the demand and what he was calling for and took to the streets in a peaceful democratic fashion and marched for the right to vote.  Eventually, the CPA conceded to the pressure and included in the TAL a stipulation that elections are to be held in January 2005.  So it actually can be argued that Sistani fulfilled al-Sadr's concept of "supervision" in that particular incident.  Now, al-Sadr himself wrote in his work "Role of the Shia Imams in the Reconstruction of Islamic Society" that the governments of the day--or the governments of the previous Imams, the Shia imams--kept the imams under a strict surveillance and tried at every cost to sever their contact with the people.  So I believe, had the imams the freedoms afforded to individuals in modern-day human rights, then they would not have had a problem nor would they have been killed for their application of "supervision."  So, in short, the final piece to the puzzle in creating al-Sadr's Islamic democratic and liberal state would be to establish a supreme court that does not require Islamic scholars.  To do anything else will endanger Iraq's democratization and deal a death blow to al-Sadr's enlightening vision.  Thanks.  (Applause.)  MR. RUBIN:  Thank you very much.  And I'd just like to throw in my two cents worth and emphasize that the views and tensions and debates that Sama described are really among the great debates, perhaps the greatest debates, in Iraq, and I would just suggest that the fate of the American adventure there will rest on how those debates are decided amongst the Shia community.  With that, I will pass over to Zainab.  MS. AL-SUWAIJ:  Thank you very much.  It's great to be here with you all, and thank you very much, AEI, for making this conference possible and this gathering possible in this period of time, which is considered a very critical period of time.  I will be talking about the role of religion and its impact on women and the Iraqi education system, since in the past three or four years I've been working on these projects inside Iraq and also lobbying for it outside the country as well.  Religion plays a big role in Iraqi society, especially in the past period of time and through the history of Iraq as well.  There are two kinds of religion--or traditions of the religion per se.  The first one was the traditional Islam practice, which was very well known in Iraq and still the majority of Iraqis are practicing that.  The other part, which is the political Islam, that appeared on the field in the late '70s, or during the rise of the Iranian revolution in the late '70s.  Certainly, the majority of Iraqis were followers of Ayatollah Khoei up until the '90s, and in the late '70s, early '80s, when the other political part of Islam started to be raised in the Iraqi society, that was very clear.  The education system inside Iraq mainly was taught in the school system under the government supervision, and the religious classes of the curriculum were taught from Sunni faith perspectives.  Of course, the government was a Sunni government in that period of time.  The approach was directly to serve Saddam and his propaganda, and especially used against the war with Iran of that period.  At the same time, it did not acknowledge any other faith group inside Iraq.  It did not acknowledge the Shiites, did not acknowledge the Sufi, did not acknowledge other religions--Christianity, Judaism, Yazidis--all of these other groups inside Iraq.  It's been totally ignored for years and years, and all of these children, they've been going to school but they have nothing, really, mentioning about their religion or their heritage as well.  So the government used religion to serve its own propaganda and to bring people on board as this is their main faith for the country and everyone has to respect it and everyone has to work within it, even though the government was a secular government.  If we are looking now at, for example, the curriculum after two and a half years after the fall of the regime, we see that the curriculum has not been changed up until now.  Most of the curriculum is still in use and includes a lot of hate speech, a lot of anti-semitic words and phrases, even though we are now in the new Iraq.  But these phrases are still used--non-Muslims are infidel, jihad is used as the main tool, which the main understanding of it in these books is to kill non-Muslims.  Unfortunately these things have still been used up until now and have not been changed and the new books have not been distributed up until this period of time.  So this will bring a lot of big problems, since Iraq is going through changing periods from a dictatorship through democracy, but we need to implement such roles and changing the phrases that have been used, the hate-speech words inside this curriculum, to be comparable with the new era that Iraq is living under right now.  Also, we have noticed in many areas in Iraq the impact of religious parties on education.  The biggest problems that affected, for example, Shia religious parties in the southern part of Iraq, the Wahabis or the Salafis in the northwest part of Iraq.  Many of these political parties, they go to schools, they give lectures.  Also they recruit young students and, as well, brainwash these children.  Of course, it's not only religion being taught here; there are so many other concepts serving these political parties and their agendas as well.  So the danger facing the Iraqi children in this period of time is really big.  Also, for example, in the universities women have been forced to wear head scarfs even if they are not practicing.  Or men, they have to grow a beard.  And many of the students are not allowed to practice their festivals inside the universities and colleges, something as simple as a graduation party or many other occasions that they were to celebrate; or as simple as taking a field trip.  This is a new thing that has been added to the society inside Iraq, especially when we see the rise of the religious extremist political parties right now and how they function in the country, whether in the south or in the western part of Iraq.  So these are some of the examples that have been happening inside the universities.  Also, after that, putting all of these posters inside schools celebrating all of the rituals.  Sometimes it's not only celebrating it in the street or in the mosque, but celebrating it in the schools and making it a small religious organization or foundation.  Also you see the rise of recruitment among the younger students.  They are recruiting a lot of young students in these schools and affecting their views and thoughts for the future of Iraq.  Basically the result that I see right now in the southern part of Iraq is like an Iran state.  This was not, certainly, what we hoped for the new Iraq.  Also, there are a lot of kids who dropped out of schools, and this number has been on the rise for the past few years, especially during the insurrection in Iraq, and many of the children have to work to support their families.  Some of them have been kicked out of school because a family member has been part of a political party or been accused of something or been executed.  Also, physical abuse from the teachers was one of the main reasons for these kids to drop out of school and leave school and not to go back.  These kids, most of them, are in the streets right now.  Many of them have been recruited by these political parties.  Many of them have been used as suicide bombers for a few hundred dollars, or many of them are being used to kill other people or used in demonstrations, especially as we see, for example, with Moqtadir al-Sadr and his group.  Unfortunately, these things are happening inside the Iraqi schools, and the impact of it is really big and will affect generations of Iraqi students and the youth generation in Iraq in the future.  On the other hand, I've been working on women's participation, women's rights inside Iraq.  This is another very critical subject that we have to focus on in this period of time, as much as we've been focusing on in the past few years as well.  The role of religious political parties also influencing women's status that has been diminished because of the rise of these strict religious political parties.  And especially now, when we see the new constitution and we see that women's rights are not clearly implemented in this new constitution, which will give women a very limited role in society and a very small one, also--especially if the constitution does not protect women's rights, and the Sharia law, or Islamic law, will be imposed on women to eliminate their work in society.  The current situation, especially when we look at the constitution, things that they do not really respect or have the international treaties, like (inaudible), being implemented in the new constitution, that will give more space to violate women's rights in the constitution and in the country in the future.  Also, the impact of using the Islamic law for family law, this is going to be a big challenge for Iraqis, because if we are talking about a Sharia law or an Islamic law, what Sharia law are we talking about?  Are we talking about the Sunni, are we talking about the Shia, are we talking about many other interpretations that are in there within the society and within the religious understanding inside Iraq?  So that will be a big factor to cause a lot of problems, especially in terms of inheritance, equality, and also custody, divorce, marriage, and so on.  I would like to just conclude by saying that the upcoming period of time--as much as the past period of time was challenging, the upcoming period of time is challenging as well.  I think, in terms of education, I think the ministry of education should take a stand to go through the curriculum and the language--especially there are organizations and companies that work under a grant from the U.S. government, working in Iraq and monitoring the education system and all of that, they should put strict rules on not having such phrases of hate speech and anti-semitism and all of these things, like jihad and infidel people and all of that, in the curriculum.  And also, to help use the youth of the country, who represent the future of Iraq as a country, to use their effort and energy to build Iraq in a very constructive way--not to use their ability to demolish Iraq.  In the end, also, empowering women, I think, in terms of this critical period of time, I think empowering women leaders inside Iraq to take a stand.  Empowering them to take a stand against all of this big confrontation war against women, I think, in Iraq is very important.  So any help that anybody or any organization or the government can provide Iraqi women with at this period of time, I think, will be very valuable for the future of women inside Iraq, especially as women represent half or more than half of the population inside the country.  So if we are talking about peace and prosperity and stability inside Iraq, I think these things should be taken into perspective.  Thank you very much.  (Applause.)  MR. RUBIN:  Thank you.  I'm going to abuse my position here and ask the first question.  But after that, I will throw it out to the audience.  And I'd just like to emphasize again that we'll use the rules that Fred Kagan mentioned--that is, identify yourself; if you have an affiliation, give it; be sure there is a question in your commentary.  And I would add one other.  Be sure the words in your question are more than the words in your commentary.  Now, just a very quick question.  This is to Sheikh Gaylani.  Do you think that Sufiism in Iraq is actually still an effective force against the spread of Salafism?  SHEIKH GAYLANI:  Well, I think they are effective, but the problem is they are not wild like Wahabis.  I mean, Wahabis, because they are very wild, let me say--and, you know, everyone is scared.  But I don't want to use "scared" because they fear from them, but they don't want to increase the problem.  It's happened with me once before, when I was in Baghdad.  I have a problem with someone, which he carried the Wahabis ideas.  So the second day was Friday, so my people heard about this issue, that I had a problem with someone in fact about the differences between our ideas.  So around 2,000 from my people they came.  They think there will be something.  So when I saw this methods going to something will happen very dangerous, I slowly withdrew from the place in order to save (inaudible).  I didn't want more bleeding for our people to happen under my name.  So I said better for me just to keep quiet, and all the people they say, okay, just keep quiet, please.  We are in a very serious situation and we don't want our name to be stepped on by others.  So this is one of the situations there.  But the problem is, for me--in fact, as my two sisters and my brother, they mentioned, we have two big problems now in Iraq.  And unfortunately, because al-Muslimin, not because of al-Islam.  Al-Islam is right always, but they bring different view which they think is right.  And they want to force the people to follow it.  Islam never say like that.  Never at all.  So this is one of the problems.  Second, the interference of the religion falsely in many parts of life nowadays in Iraq.  As my sister had mentioned, in the universities, if you go to read the Iraqi newspapers what's happening for universities, they force the professor or the president of the university, that day you must make it a holiday, or that day you must do like that, for example.  Why?  Because we want to celebrate, or whatever it is.  Other areas also, the Wahabis, they say today you all close.  And they people are scared because sometimes they say we cannot depend on policemen because policemen they cannot sometimes protect themselves; how can they protect us?  So that is what is happening nowadays.  MR. RUBIN:  Thank you.  It would sound like a Muslim Gandhi is not over the horizon in Iraq.  I'll take questions now.  The gentleman right here.  QUESTION:  My name is Rafaeli (inaudible).  I have a short theological question to Mr. Jawad.  The (inaudible), and particularly Zarqawi, refers to a Shia as a "Rafidha."  What does he mean by that?  MR. JAWAD:  Zarqawi, he named a Shia as a Rafidha, that's in the beginning of Islam, the deep history.  The Imam Ali and his school, they didn't accept the rule of Abu Bakr as the first caliphate.  That means they refused--"rafidha" means the refusers--they refused the Muslim society because he believed he had the right to the society.  And then they called the follower of Imam Ali as a rafidha, the refuser.  MR. RUBIN:  The second part of that definition is "that's not good."  QUESTION:  Katrine Michael from Kurdish Human Rights.  Let me speak in Arabic, maybe.  (Two questions in Arabic.)  MR. JAWAD:  To make a difference in the Iraqi people, we refuse that.  And as we are a follower of Ayatollah al-Khoei and our foundation is named, we don't believe in the right (inaudible)--that means give authorities to religion the role of government.  So for that reason, we refuse any kind of split--we split, first of all, your questions--we refuse a split between the Iraqi people.  But in the meantime, according to the human rights principle, any person has to follow his belief.  That's why it is a human rights call.  He believes, such as this servant of the religion, then he believes in that; that is right, in the meantime.  But the government has the responsibility how to make a balance between all these different schools of thought.  Regarding the second question, you asked me about what organization educated the women in the south of Iraq how to vote (?) and which list to be elected.  This is good.  We need someone to make a campaign and spread awareness about the election.  But in the meantime, we didn't like--it is an abuse of the law of the election to force the people to elect one list.  This is not our responsibility, I think.  You have to raise this question to (inaudible) Rashid -- he's a member of the election commission.  MS. HADAD:  Just in addition to the first point about choosing which sect to follow as far as family affairs go, actually, in Iraq's past there was such a law that allowed people to stipulate which sect they would like to go to court with when they get married.  And so they would say I'd like to, you know, follow the Shia law or Sunni or whatever.  But it was eventually put to a stop because the majority were actually stipulating the Shia because it allowed them more freedoms.  So it has happened in Iraq previously and it didn't lead to any division.  MR. RUBIN:  Other questions?  I don't want to discriminate against my left.  Over here.  QUESTION:  Well, speaking of the left, I'm Bob Dreyfus.  I'm writing for Rolling Stone magazine.  (Laughter.)  QUESTION:  I also write for the American Prospect.  I have a question about al-Dawa.  It's one thing, you know, to have sort of political and theoretical principles about democracy.  But isn't it also true that in the 1970s that partisans of al-Dawa carried out a sabotage and terrorism and assassination campaign inside Iraq?  And isn't it also true that when al-Sadr was arrested by Saddam an, unfortunately, executed, that he was also pretty loudly defending Khomeini's revolution in Iran?  And isn't it also true that a faction of al-Dawa helped to blow up the American embassy in Kuwait in 1983 and conducted other acts of terrorism against the French and others?  In other words, there seems to be, at least historically, a certain contradiction between the peaceful belief in democratic action and its carrying out in terms of political action in the real world.  And then my other question is how does that relate to the charges about extensive Iranian support for various Islamist movements in places like Basra and elsewhere, where there's, again, clear terrorism being carried out by Shias there against everything from liquor stores to making women dress in certain ways and so forth?  MR. RUBIN:  I think that was a perfect example of folding commentary into a question.  Does anybody on the panel want to take that?  Sama?  MS. HADAD:  I'm assuming that the question is geared towards me.  Now, I'm not a Dawa Party member, so I cannot speak for them or their past.  I'm just here to clarify Shia Islamic political theory and the two thoughts--one, Khomeini's "rule of the jurisprudent" and the second, Mohammad Bakr al-Sadr's "rule of the people."  As far as whether or not Islamists were carrying out acts inside Iraq in the '70s against the government, there's not dispute about that because that's why they were being killed and that's why membership to the party was banned.  But I'm not--so I can't really answer the rest of it.  MR. RUBIN:  Anybody else?  I'm relieved to see that on the left we've eliminated the association between terrorism and freedom fighters.  Next question?  QUESTION:  Thank you very much.  My name is Maysoon al-Damluji.  I'm the deputy minister of culture in Iraq.  I have a small comment and a small question.  The comment is for Mr. Ghanim Jawad.  I find that there is a chasm, a gap in the rhetoric between what politicians and--well, the official rhetoric, like what you have presented, of what is happening in Iraq, that there his the dismay of the Shia ruling Iraq at the moment.  I find that the dismay has other reasons.  I don't think many people care who rules at the moment.  I think the dismay is about ruining old establishments, things like the Board of Tourism and the Board of Antiquities and the Ministry of Oil and things like that.  I mean, people have known and respected these institutions for the last 80 years, ever since the formation--and including the families, the personal status quo.  People have got accustomed to it.  It has become part of their culture.  And now they find that the new government is trying to ruin these establishments without replacing them with something that works.  This is what is causing the largest dismay among people--in my opinion, anyway.  And the question I have is for Sheikh Gaylani.  I'd like to know how influential you think the Wahabis are in the western-- I know they have stirred up quite a few problems.  I mean, they have kept the western region from being stable for the last two and a half years.  But how deep-rooted to you think they are?  Because, to be honest, I am someone who didn't think that there Wahabis, that they even existed in Iraq before 9th of May 2003.  Thank you very much.  SHEIKH GAYLANI:  Well, I agree with you.  Before, for example, Fallujah and Ramadi and Bakuba and other Sunni areas, for example, there are no Wahabis.  There are no Wahabis at all.  Fallujah exactly, they call it the city of the most (inaudible) from that city.  But by force.  I asked my people there when the problems started.  Why this happens?  By force.  By force, some of the--  For example, nowadays in some of these areas, let's say before, when the Wahabis started their mission, they want to create, as they feel, an Islamic state.  And they say, look, the reason for them--they say, "Now Shia they want to do the same, so we want to protect you."  The people, of course, they never believe that.  But with the use of arms, the people, of course, become scared of them.  Fallujah, I know all the places there.  It was a very quiet area and very nice area, in fact.  So I think because of this problem of the interference of Wahabis, it's become bigger and bigger till it's reached to what is happening nowadays.  Unfortunately.  But what we hope, we hope one thing.  We want to see the light at the end of the channel.  MR. RUBIN:  I'm going to take just a few more questions.  If my assistant Rachel's around here, let me know if General Petreus is anywhere within the area.  QUESTION:  Thank you.  Dave Butterworth from The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer.  Sheikh, this isn't a completely religious question, so I hope I can get away with it.  You noted at the beginning of your talk, made a brief note of what you saw as a lack of help that countries in the region are giving to Iraq.  I wonder why you think they're not helping and what you would like to see them do to help the situation there.  SHEIKH GAYLANI:  Well, in the beginning, when everything started, I believe they were careless.  Nowadays they want to do, but the people, they have no belief anymore on them.  I mean, the other country.  Because whatever they do, they want to do something, the people believe they want to do that because they have some interest in Iraq and not to do that because of the benefit of the people.  So people give up on them almost.  That is what we feel.  MR. RUBIN:  Okay, I'm going to take one more question.  It must be short.  I have just heard the general is marching toward us.  (Laughter.)  MR. RUBIN:  So I'll take the lady in the back there.  Remember, short--and short answer, please.  QUESTION:  Thank you.  My name is Susan Dakak.  I'm a member of the Women's Alliance for a Democratic Iraq.  This question is to Zainab.  First let me say that I commend you on the hard work you've done for the Iraqi women and children and congratulate you on all the achievements you've so far achieved.  My question is, if you take one single most important article in the draft constitution today, which is the most important one and what is the most crucial part about it and what can we do to help change it, and why?  MS. AL-SUWAIJ:  Well, to answer your question quickly, there are many different articles in the constitution that need to be--certainly in my opinion and many others'--need to be changed.  But I think the laws that specifically addressed women issues in the constitution, that certainly needs to be modified and certainly need to be addressed in a very specific way.  The main thing that I think needs to be addressed is having the Islamic law in the constitution to be as one of the sources--it's not the main source, but one of the sources--and to have all different religious representatives agree on these issues, especially when it's related to women.  It's a very critical subject and it also impacts the social law, or the family law, of the Iraqi women, certainly.  And I think this is a very important thing that needs to be changed, which is having the law, especially what is related to a family, as a secular law.  And when people what to follow any, like, religious way, this is going to be their personal choice.  Thank you.  MR. RUBIN:  With that, I'm going to draw it to a close.  I want to thank the panel, particularly those from the panel who've had to fly over water to get here, and then everybody else for coming.  (Applause.)  (IN PROGRESS.)--get into that, because it's in the lead that's critical.  Yes, there was some bouncing around from Level II to Level I and back to Level II.  And I can explain that.  Some of this is just a very young, almost immature system for assessing readiness.  Sometimes a unit moves.  It's not longer as independent as the advisors and the Iraqi leaders thought they were.  But the focus should be on the aggregate, starting at Level II, because Level II, or in the lead--and again I'll explain this later--is where Iraqi battalions can replace coalition battalions.  They don't have to be Level I, which is fully independent.  They can just be in the lead.  There are several battalions in Baghdad alone, for example, that actually control their own area of responsibility.  In fact, Dr. Chalabi went to the--a brigade headquarters.  And he visited that one, laid a wreath on their martyr monument.  That unit is in fact the unit that controls what used to be known as Purple Heart Boulevard, Hiafa Street.  And they control that location in a way that no Coalition force ever could control it.  They speak the language and the dialect.  They know the neighborhood.  They can get a feel that we would never get.  And in fact, I was very proud to walk down the center of Hiafa Street about four months ago with a battalion from that organization with their command sergeant major, by the way, which is yet another subtext to all of this, the developing non-commissioned officer corps, which will take time but has begun.  Now we have helped change dramatically the police training.  It originally started out as a model lifted from Kosovo, an eight-week program.  It was long on democracy, policing in a democracy, human rights, which very much is needed, but perhaps not quite as much of that to the exclusion of say shutting the AK-47.  They were not shooting the AK-47.  This is an AK-47 world, not a 9-mm pistol world.  It's a world in which they needed to be trained on improvised explosive detection, on how to deal with injury control points to prevent suicide bombers from getting inside compounds.  And by the way, again, I don't believe there's a case of a suicide bomber getting inside a compound since 30, January either.  There are a number that are blown up in entry control points.  There's a suicide vest wearer that got into a police commando compound, sadly, clearly a traitor.  And I can talk later about vetting and so forth as well.  The operational construct has been dramatically.  By the way, the police training also increased from eight to 10 weeks and it will gradually increase.  It's also supplemented by a large amount of specialty training, refresher training, going back to the range and so forth.  The operational construct, a great deal more emphasis and assistance provided in the area of force protection, construction of proper entry control points, radio networks that again link a police station with a quick reaction force, how to, again, man these kinds of locations and so forth and so on.  And again, that has helped the police enormously in those areas where that's required.  And I guess I should pause there and say let's remember that in 12 of the 18 provinces, i.e., the nine southern and the three Iraqi Kurdish provinces, the level of violence is really very, very low.  And frankly, Iraqi security forces are very much in the lead in all of those areas.  And most recently, in Najaf and Karbul, there were formal hand-over ceremonies to transition control of those areas to the Iraqi security forces.  Next slide.  NATO is in the game.  Again, there is a bit of perception, I think, that the NATO training mission in Iraq is not contributing.  It is very much.  Yes, it is not out there with transition team member, but it is in the Ministry of Defense.  It's in the three major operation centers in Iraq--Interior, Defense and what's called the National Joint Ops Center.  It is mentoring in there, and probably the biggest contribution they've made so far, in addition to equipment and out-of-country training, was on 25 September, when the junior and senior staff colleges reopened in Iraq.  A very, very big deal.  And they reopened with Iraqi instructors in the front of the classroom, not coalition instructors.  We waited seven months additional to do that, but we were committed to doing it with them in the front, not with us, because it's much harder to transition once you're planted up there and think you're irreplaceable than it is when they're up there from the get-go and you're in the back providing perhaps again mentoring assistance and so forth.  So that has happened.  Both the junior and the senior staff colleges.  There are several dozen in each of those course, and they are going.  The Iraqi Military Academy was already in operation.  That's on a Sandhurst model, by the way, for the Brits that are in the audience here.  I sort of voted for West Point, but somehow or other they won out and they were in charge of that particular effort.  So we exceeded to that request.  And it has worked very well.  And at one point in time, for example, 40 Iraqi instructors spent about a couple of months actually with RUC SACS (ph) on their back and the Brecon Beacons for anybody that knows those wonderful hills in the U.K. and at Sandhurst getting spooled up to increase the quality.  There are over 500 cadets in there.  Another couple hundred enter about every quarter.  And again, that's an effort--the first graduating class already is out and back in the units.  And they'll graduate every three months or so, a one year program--or nine month program again like Sandhurst.  I should highlight this and say this institution rebuilding effort--because of course Minstiki (ph) is also helping rebuild institutions--came about because Prime Minister Alawi, to his credit, early on grabbed us and said, "Help us not just to build battalions, brigades and divisions, but to rebuild institutions."  And he was absolutely right.  Institutions take a lot longer.  We're seeing that certainly again with these branch schools, the training bases, the military academy staff colleges, the war college will be next.  By the way, there will be an Iraqi TRADC for those of you who know our Army's Training and Doctrine Command.  There will be a national defense university, a center for lessons learned, and a center for leadership and ethics and all of the rest of that.  But he was absolutely right, because over the long term, that is what will be critically important to redeveloping and in some cases helping foster the generational change that will be so important in the long term to this effort.  Next slide.  The equipment is very much flowing.  And I will show you the numbers of the equipment.  And I think you'll agree that they're staggering.  There are some areas where we need to help Iraq more.  And Iraq, in fact, needs to help itself and it is and we are.  That's in the wheeled armored vehicle area.  And in fact there's some pretty big orders out there.  But it takes time to get that stuff in, particularly if we're competing with our own forces in some cases.  But as I mentioned, there's already two brigades out there.  I mentioned the enormous contribution from Hungary--two tank battalions worth of T-72 main battle tanks.  The Iraqis went and looked at these.  In fact, that great Iraqi commander, and he came back and said, "We never had anything this good under Saddam, and we really look forward to having it."  In fact, what they're doing quite well with frankly right now is the T-55, which all of you know is two generations back from the T-72.  Greece, I should add on there, dozens of BMPs that are coming in, track personnel carriers, a very important contribution.  And the sum total of all of that together with what they bought themselves, what we were able to take out of the Mujah Hadin al-Kalk (ph) equipment yard and refurbish will equip the entire mechanized division.  And that should, all of it, the additional brigades should be on the streets some of them in mid-October.  The rest by mid-December.  And then the final brigade in the spring of next year.  Again, these countries here contributed about 20,000 weapons, all of them, right before the elections.  A very big assistance at that time and help with the elections.  There are other contributions from NATO, including out-of-country training.  And just as a data point again, Iraq has somewhere around 3,200 members of their security forces out of the country on a given day.  It's not true that they are not taking advantage of those offers that they believe are good for Iraq.  But to be sure, there's about 3,100 or so of those are in Jordan.  The bulk in the police academy, their very large international police training center that has coalition instructors, and by the way, is increasingly though being taught by Iraqis.  And the objective at all times is to constantly transition to Iraqis and in fact, just recently the first academy class graduated from Baghdad, that was completely Iraqi taught.  Next slide.  Very, very extensive construction as I mentioned has been completed.  There's a lot more ongoing.  This is a colossal effort is the only way to describe this to you.  I gave you some numbers earlier in terms of hundreds of police stations, over 100 border forts, et cetera, et cetera.  You know, I look back frankly on when I was the commander of the 101st Airborne Division and some of you may recall that we were fairly aggressive in using money that was provided to us then called SURP (ph).  We got a grand total of $55 million or $54 million I think it was during that time.  And I thought that was--I mean I wanted a lot more.  It was coming.  It was flowing.  But in this effort alone and in the construction effort alone, it's about a $2 billion program over the course of about the last two years or so.  And again, it gives you some sense of the magnitude of it.  Next slide.  I talked about the expansion of the transition team effort to where every battalion, brigade, headquarters division, headquarters, all of the other headquarters and organizations, it also extends to province police  chiefs in the Ministry of Interior and so forth and about the partnership plans.  Again, every one of the 10 divisions, dozens of brigades and over a hundred battalions, over 115 battalions in the field has a partner unit from the Coalition.  And that again helps enormously.  Next slide.  And I did mention that there are these short, mid and long-range plans.  And you say, well, gosh, you know, A, what's so hard about that?  And B, you know, this is sort of obvious.  Let me tell you, this is critical.  If you don't literally know what you want to look like five years from now, you don't know what steps to take right now to start that process.  And it takes that long in some areas.  In the case of--just to give you an example.  If Iraq wants a U.S. military academy graduate, sometime from now, they need to start right now because it's going to take five years to produce them.  It's going to take about a year--hi, Martin, how are you, good to see you--it's going to take about a year to get them through language training and perhaps some other instruction to ensure that they're set up for success.  And then it's going to take four years at the military academy.  And again, you can back off of all of these and say if we want to look like this at that particular time, six months, 18 months, three years and beyond, what do we need to do right now to get there from here?  And that largely has been done, although again a very complex endeavor.  But in all of these different areas, we know what the force structure eventually should be.  I'll show what it will look like in sort of a macro level.  We know what the training infrastructure needs to look like in terms of branch schools, training battalions, training brigades now and academies and so forth, what institutions need to be reestablished to help foster that development, what equipment needs to be procured and so forth.  And it is a very, very, very challenging endeavor.  And it's all being carried out in the face of the most brutal insurgency and the toughest environment that you can imagine.  Next slide.  So here's the bottom line.  On this slide, and I'll give you one at the end again, there has been tremendous progress.  I don't care what metric you want to take.  You take any one of these metrics, take 30 percent off of it, and it still is enormous progress.  And that is a credit to courageous Iraqis, who yes, we have enabled but they have done it in the end.  I am a qualified optimist, and why do I say that?  Because I want to keep the heat on Intifade's (ph) boss and all of the others.  The Iraqi leaders need to do certain things over the course of the next few months, in particular.  They know it, they're doing it.  But again, we've invested an enormous amount in this.  And I would never pass up an opportunity to remind them of that.  And Intifade will affirm, as will any of the others, that when we have met with Iraqi leaders, I was very forthright in saying that, you know, Doctor, it would be awesome to see this happen or that happen and so forth.  And I think in general, that that's being done.  But at the national level, again, ministry level, province level, and in the security forces, leaders have to do certain things.  And that's my qualification on that optimism.  And there is a lot of work to be done.  I don't want to paint this a sweetness and light, easy or on autopilot, or you know, to put too much lipstick on any pigs that might be out there.  This is really hard work, and a very tough environment.  And there's a lot more work to be done.  But a huge amount has been accomplished.  Next slide.  Okay, here's the latest numbers.  By the way, these are as of Monday.  So these are the current numbers.  And so for those of you have really followed this closely, yup, there were 194,000 last week, in fact when Generals Casey and Abizaid were on the Hill.  They do grow this fast, and the reason is when a large unit comes on line, when it moves from Level IV, as I'll describe, to Level III, the whole unit adds in.  We have police academy graduations that are as much as a 1,000 at a time.  Actually, more than that.  Sometimes 1,500.  So again, this does continue.  Then we do go certainly some weeks where there perhaps has not been a large increase.  But make no mistake about it.  We've looked at how do we increase the numbers, if you will, by the mid-October referendum, just the same we did.  How can we help them get to as much as possible by 30, January this past year, and of course focus on mid-December as well.  But that is a very substantial number there.  And you can see the categories.  And these are just broad categories, by the way.  But it's somewhere around 86,000 police and so forth.  And I can actually get into some more granularity with you later on if you really want to get into that.  You can see in there some terrific units.  I want to highlight this one, by the way.  This is the Iraq version of the FBI hostage rescue team.  It is extremely good.  It does independent operations almost every night of the week, mostly in Baghdad now.  For a while it was split between Mosul and Baghdad.  They got Mosul generally back under control.  And it is now focused on Baghdad.  It's been deployed other places as well.  It goes out each night.  Our assistance to this unit is generally still logistical.  And by the way, we get them through the checkpoint at the airport.  We then say, "have a nice operation."  It's at night.  They go out.  They do the operation.  They detain whoever their targets were.  If they're there, they take them by the major crime unit, typically with which they drop them off.  They've got legal cover, if you will.  And they come back, meet our mentors at the checkpoint, who then get them back through the checkpoint.  And they go back to their base.  Despite that, they are a Level II unit.  And the reason is because they still need some Coalition assistance.  And so I'm going to make this point repeatedly, that's the case of an organization that is really a superb, very, very highly trained outfit.  It is comparable to our special mission units both in our United States, say in the FBI, and by the way, if you get down into the Special Operations, this is over 1,500 now.  It includes a commando battalion, a counter-terrorist battalion, and a support element now.  Their counter-terrorist unit is very much of the ilk, if you will, of our Army Special Mission Unit.  Yes, it can't do deeply buried super hardened weapons of mass destruction, but it sure can do precision raids and operations and turn those operations much more rapidly than we ever can.  Because in the time that we are still asking, is that Mohammed with an E or an A, through a translator who may or may not speak the dialect, and then feeding it back into our all-source intelligence data base to find out if anything comes out, in that time, they will already have gotten what they need, they know where the address is.  Of course, there's no street in much of Iraq anyway.  And they will be back in the pick-up truck or the HUMVEE, which they do have some of, and on to the next target in the time that we are still getting the translation done, writing it down, feeding it into our, again, our data bases.  So enormous value and a very, very superb unit and quite a bit larger than the U.S. Army's Special Mission Unit.  This should be close to 200,000 as I'll show in a subsequent slide by the mid-October elections.  Next slide.  I'm sorry, could you come back to that, because I'd be happy to go into more chapter and verse on some of these later.  But I mean it's really important to note that it's much more than just these battalions here and these battalions here.  That's where the battalions are that we tend to count and actually here in the Special OPs.  It's very, very important the logistical support elements that are being developed, the five motor transportation regiments that are operating and another one being trained, the numerous base support units, the numerous defense units.  There's an Iraqi air force flying three C-130s now.  And by the way, all trained at Little Rock Air Force Base, a lot of them, and doing quite a credible job.  But beyond that, there are highway patrols.  This is their secret service.  Way over 600 that are trained.  And they are protecting now the Iraqi principals. Yup, there are still some U.S. Navy SEALS and there are some mentors.  But by-in-large, again, it is largely done now--and that's another recent transition, by Iraqi version of the secret service.  And then we never tend to count, we overlook the police.  Certainly, individual police we recognized really quite some time back, are not going to be able to stand up to insurgents, which is why we helped Iraq create police commando battalions and units, which have the cohesion, the force and the staying power to do that, just as in Italy, the mafia had to be defeated not by individual police, but by caraminari (ph) units, with protected judges and all of the rest of that.  And that's not a bad example, frankly, although an even more lethal enemy.  Next slide.  This is where we are right now.  This is the so-called sand chart.  I don't want to get too much into this.  It's a briefing in itself, except to point out a couple of things.  First of all, this effort did not begin with Minstiki (ph).  It began way back.  It began under the CPA days.  Yup, a lot of was brought together under Minstiki, the police and the military together under Minstiki last June, but a lot of this work was ongoing, well before folks like Walt Slocum (ph) and others that got things going in the very beginning, Paul Eaton (ph), the original CMAC (ph) commander and so forth.  And it does continue.  And it has been a pretty steady, pretty steady up hill.  By the way, the training equip number is those that are in service.  This is not people that walked across a stage.  That's actually about 12,000 or 15,000 more just on the police side.  Because we have lost a substantial number of police both due to casualties, due to the collapses in, for example, in Mosul and Anbar (ph) Province and some others.  And we've done our best to back those numbers out and where necessary to interpellate just to make sure that we are not claiming more than are actually out there.  And by the way, it also shows that this is very much still a work in progress and will continue to build.  It starts to level out somewhere around early '07.  You can see the most again the Iraqi army largely complete--10 divisions--with all of the support elements, which in fact is probably the longer pole in the tent, and eventually the police right there and then some additional odds and sods in there.  Next side.  There's a couple of slides that we've used with congressional delegations.  And for what it's worth, this is sort of the guts of that briefing, less a couple of classified slides.  And this is one of them.  And we show that back in July of '04--now I'm not showing what used to be known as Iraqi national guard originally, Iraqi civil defense corps.  This the strictly what we used to call regular army intervention force, special operations forces, and now MEC (ph) units.  But as of 1 July last year in 2004, about the transition of sovereignty, there were no national units as we used that term then, fighting whatsoever.  There were six battalions that were in training.  By the way, they're all now very much in the fight.  In fact, all of them--actually not all of them--these are in Anbar Province, and these are actually up in Nineveh Province.  Now, this is all there was.  Next slide.  This what was out there as of 24 September.  Everything that's green means it's actually operational and in the fight.  It is at least Level III and many of those, again, are Level II units because these are the so-called national units.  And if you know  join them with the Iraqi national guard units, which I didn't put on here because it would have been apples and oranges, and there are very, very few national guard units that were operational back in the summer of last year as well.  But you would then have over 80 units actually that would be on this slide.  The other interesting thing to note is that all of these forces are operating in the so-called Sunni triangle area, the areas in which of course the insurgency is the most active.  Even this organization down here, down in Wasit Province at Adhamiya is actually operating up in the northwestern part of Adhamiya in an area that has been challenging in the past.  And they cleaned that up with some units that came down from Baghdad.  So these units are all in the fight.  And you can see, just to give you one comparative data point, that has what has happened.  By the way, it shows the additional units that are all being developed.  These are among those 14 battalions that I mentioned, that are in training or are Level IV units now.  Next slide.  There were no special police battalions as of last summer, none.  We were starting to envision with the Iraqis and I have to give credit to the ministry of interior at that time for coming up with the idea of the police commandos, although the public WER (ph) battalions and MEC (ph) police battalions were in the structure being developed.  But none of them were even in training, actually, as late as late August or early September.  Next slide.  And this is what is out there now.  And again, you can see where they are.  This also includes some special border forces that are out in Anbar Province.  But again, some 27 special police battalions, plus the emergency response unit, which is a battalion and plus special border force battalions.  Enormous growth in these.  They are, to be sure, uneven.  The bulk of them are Level III.  But there are some that are Level II, but I will also tell you that regardless of what level they are, they are among the most aggressive and most active units in the Iraqi, really in all of the Iraqi security forces, not just the ministry of interior.  And again, they're all up in this area.  Now this is a little bit dated.  This is a couple of weeks old, and there are some more that are moving around.  But that is, again, a good comparative data point.  Actually, these are redeployed from (inaudible).  Next slide.  Now you've heard a lot about these levels.  Let me show you how we arrive at these levels.  It is very similar to the unit status report of the U.S. Army.  It looks at personnel fill.  Do they have--what percentage is the fill?  And do they have the right skill sets, if you will, and so forth?  Very similar.  By the way, most Iraqi units, not all, but most of them are actually over strength.  In fact, the pressure is to hold at a certain level because there are so many people that want to be part of the Iraqi security forces.  There's absolutely no shortage of volunteers.  And that includes now from the Sunni Arab population, within which there was targeted recruiting done and resulted in about 4,000 additional Sunni Arab recruits just over the course of the last couple of months.  So it will take time to get them in.  But ever after, the Sunni imans, Sunni Arab imans issuing an infatwa back I think it was February or March when they said that it was--after the elections and they realize they had made a huge mistake by not participating in the elections and that they were losing because they weren't participating in the security forces largely do to intimidation to be fair, where retention and recruiting were a challenge, that's certainly no longer the case.  And we're working hard now to help the Iraqi military, in particular, in a sense repopulate units that were largely Shiite because they were recruited during the time that Sunni Arabs were not volunteering.  There's a great sensitivity among the Iraqis, not just among us, to having national units that are reflective of the national population and that is what's driving that.  Command and control, that's a hardware and software issue.  Do they have the radios and the other equipment needed to perform command and control?  And do they have the skill sets, the software and the training not just in the leaders, but in the staffs as well?  And again, that's an area that we're trying to help.  Training, there are mission essential tasks identified for every Iraqi battalion, every unit.  What's their level of proficiency in those tasks?  Do they have the equipment to sustain themselves and the ability to do it?  What is the level of equipping?  You know, 70 percent, 80 percent, 100 percent, all different categories based on their table of organization and equipment that were agreed in that organized process.  And then is it being maintained?  Is it ready?  And then a subjective evaluation of leadership.  That all goes in.  There's actually a number, more pages, behind each one of these.  Although candidly, this is still a very new system.  And that's one of the reasons that, again, units went Level III to I, and then in a couple of cases, oops, maybe it really wasn't Level I, and they go back to Level II.  That is not a huge cause for alarm.  It is just what happens when you have a new system, and people are trying to get the calibration.  And as I will show in a minute, the focus ought to be in these three, and then in particular on Level II and above, because as this identifies, Level II is able to plan, execute, sustain with some support.  Not much actually in many cases.  And in fact there are seven Level II battalions in Baghdad alone that have their own areas of operation, include Haifa Street as I mentioned, where we don't have to have Coalition Forces any more.  There are also actually Level III units that are very, very much augmenting and thickening our forces.  And an example of that is a police mechanized unit that's on the Airport Road.  And there's a myth still that the Airport Road is extraordinarily dangerous.  I wouldn't say it's I-95, but it is much less dangerous than it was...  (Laughter.)  MR.     :  Yes, well, maybe it is I-95 or 395.  It depends what hour of the day you're on it.  I've been shocked by the rate (ph) of return after not driving for 2.5 years to have to drive on that road.  My knuckles are white every time I do it.  But Level II and above is the key and that's where we ought to focus.  And we shouldn't get all concerned if they're some bouncing around.  What we should get concerned with if there is not a continued steady progression from Level IV, to Level III, from Level III to Level II, so that that number increases.  And by the way, that has very much continued all along.  Again, let me be very clear about what a Level I unit is.  It is not, again, just capable of fully independent operations as some folks have said.  It is totally independent.  It doesn't need anything from the Coalition.  And it again, let me tell  you, given the state of the Iraqi logistics system, the ministerial capacity and capability, the intelligence structure, the command and control, and host of other areas, it is remarkable that there would be any Level II units.  And it will be remarkable if that number increases.  So don't use that as your data point.  Use Level II and above, because it's at Level II that they can take over an area from our forces, and we can either move our forces elsewhere or eventually move some of them home.  Next slide.  Okay, here's, if you will, the unclassified characterization.  And I had the joy of briefing the Pentagon press corps today.  And they were trying to pin me down, and they said, "Well, you know, specifically what is it? "  And I said, "It's over 115, and if it were over 120, I'd say that."  So this gives you an idea, you know, of what the classified numbers are.  But over 115 combat--this is just combat--again, it doesn't include all of the transportation units, base support, base defense, infrastructure, security and the others that are actually out there contributing as well, nor does it include 86,000 plus police or what have you.  They're in the fight.  That means they are level three or above.  They bulk of those, about 80 in fact, are fighting along side.  They are a Level III.  If you back up just one second to be sure we're clear on that.  That means they're right here.  That means that they are fighting along side our forces.  They're thickening them.  They're augmenting them.  But they're not in the lead.  They're not operating on their own.  That happens at Level II.  Next slide.  And there are over three dozen, over 36 that are in the lead or fully independent.  And you know, from Congress last week, that there's one that's really independent.  So that can give you and idea of how many in the lead there are.  And if it were more than 40, I'd tell you that proudly.  So over 36.  And that is a very, very key metric.  And remember, each one of these, about 750 is authorized.  Most of them tend to be more than that, although there is a trained fight, leave, cycle that they go through that I can get into if somebody really wants to get into that as well.  Next slide.  Okay, what about specialty courses people say?  Why don't we have, you know, more specialty training?  Let me tell you, it is ongoing, and it's increasing.  And actually now, this is actually a little bit dated.  It's back as of 3 September, the last data I had when I came home.  But now you'd actually have joint staff college students that would actually be in there as well, because there 24 instructors, Iraqi instructors, are now doing the teaching.  These are actual graduates.  There's another, actually it's over six I guess here.  I mean, look at what we're helping--contracting and capacity course, hugely important.  But look here, these are what we call branch schools in the U.S. Army.  You can see some other very unique specialties here.  All of that, very, very important to reestablish an institutional capacity and helping in a sense train the trainers so that we don't have to do the training any more. And that has actually been going on, and again, for well over a year.  And what was initially us doing really originally--it was contractors doing the training, and then became Coalition forces doing it, then gradually Iraqi units, small level doing it with assistance, is now very much Iraqi units in most cases.  And then you can see on the police side a lot of that as well.  Next slide.  Do you want me to speed up?  I can.  Equipment...  MS.     :  (Inaudible.)  MR.     :  Okay, I'll speed.  Equipment.  I said that a staggering amount of equipment has been delivered.  And it has.  I mean, look at, for example over nearly 220,000 sets of body armor, over 30,000 radios.  I mean the grand total of weapons here, you do the math, over 350,000 Ak and pistols.  A staggering amount of ammunition.  There is no shortage of ammunition in Iraq now.  I can tell you there probably wasn't before either, but it wasn't all in the right hands.  And there may be in some cases some distribution challenges, but I can assure you there's more than enough ammunition.  Even Kevlar helmets gradually getting out there.  Heavy machine guns, the Coin of the Realm.  Everybody wants his own PKM.  Those are getting out there.  I don't have on their wheel armored vehicles.  That's yet another area of emphasis over the coming months.  Next slide.  Huge--again, think about, by the way, bringing all that in--the sheer bulk of it, the sheer weight of it--fighting it down with convoys--getting it all out to units, and into the hands of Iraqi soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, and police commandos and so forth.  So what about the way ahead?  Well, clearly, we've got to keep building this capacity and the capabilities in the ministries.  They've got to help us.  They've got to approve simple things like policies, and they are.  The other day we had a touchdown.  I think we got eight or nine admin policies, administrative policies, approved in the Ministry of Defense.  That sounds insignificant.  It is hugely important, because it governs promotion, selection for courses, selection of non-commissioned officers.  These are things that used to be capriciously done depending on your loyalty to the regime, your tribe, your ethnic group or political party.  And now there is much more professionalization in how that's being done, and, of course, that's the goal.  Huge challenges.  There's still some resistance to that out there, and so forth, but much greater understanding now of that.  There are Iraqi funding shortfalls.  In fact, as Entifadh can explain, there's been a request for a supplemental.  This is wonderful.  I mean you know the Ministry of Interior and Defense have their feet under them when they start asking the Ministry of Finance for more money.  And they have, and that will help them get through the year.  You've heard about some Ministry of Interior pay problems.  Frankly, right now, they are still generally more local pay problems, typically because of the tough bureaucracy it is to get people paid, and, at times, if the right pay list isn't approved by the right guy and go all the way up the chain to Baghdad, where it gets stamped one final time, and the check cut by the Ministry of Finance, which goes back down to be drawn on a bank, which is then, money is distributed individually, there's a lot of places that can fail.  And they have on occasion.  But the bigger issue is that they need more money to get through the year.  They've requested it.  I think that they will get it.  And it will be a good test again for those Iraqi leaders who are so important to everything that's happening.  Obviously, you got to keep developing units, but with a greater emphasis, and it is being given greater emphasis, on the logistical elements.  We started out with the intent, in fact, explicitly of getting Iraqis fighting for their country.  That means infantry units.  But we knew that we would have the highest tooth to tail ratio of any military in the world in history, in fact, and we do.  And now we got to help them build the support structures, the combat enablers, the combat multipliers and all the rest of that.  Leaders.  Critically important.  And again, great emphasis required there.  Got to help them get control of the borders.  Syria needs to help in that regard as well.  Very, very important, but Iraq--and that's what this operation in the western end of a province was about, Tilafer (ph.), and it's what the operations that have just begun down in Anbar Province are all about as well, and, of course, the official ports of entry.  Keep rebuilding.  Keep transitioning.  That's been ongoing, by the way.  I think we're up to six to eight bases that have been transitioned to Iraqi control.  As I mentioned, keep buying more equipment.  Iraqis buying a fair amount of it themselves.  Keep this program going, and then continue to refine those plans that I mentioned the Iraqis and we really are fairly proud of.  And the bottom line is:  Iraqi leadership.  One last slide.  As a metaphor to try to capture what it is we're doing, I used to talk to my staff in the beginning, and I said this is like a cattle drive.  And you can take the cattle out there and say their missions or maybe they're the Iraqi security forces, but we got to build the herd.  We got to make it more capable, more robust, tougher, stronger, better equipped, and everything else.  And we got to get it moving.  We got to get momentum, and we got to then keep it moving.  And I say it's going to be chaotic out there.  Some of the herd will fall behind.  And if it's important, we'll go back and get it.  But otherwise, we won't.  Some will turn left or right.  Some will, by the way, will get shot at, 'cause there's bad guys out there shooting a the herd.  It's rugged terrain, as you can see.  It's raining cats and dogs.  There are thunderbolts out there.  Some cattle are bad.  It's tough.  It's very, very hard, and we are out here with a bunch of Iraqi outriders and a few Iraqi trail bosses, like some of the bosses of some of the Iraqis who are in this room and trying to keep that momentum, and to build it, and to build that herd.  And my staff came back and said, you may call it a cattle drive, but we will call it the Mesopotamian stampede.  And they produced Fredrick Remington's print, "The Stampede," which we then gave as a going away present, signed, you know, to one of the great outriders.  In fact, Fred has one I hope hanging proudly on his wall.  So, again, thanks very much for the opportunity to lay this out to you.  I'd be happy to take questions, but, again, that's all--you should.  Yeah.  MS. PLETKA:  I'm just going to moderate our Q&A period.  I know that some of you may have asked why we went through all of these slides, and the answer is I never ever want to hear again that the U.S. is not doing a significant job with our military to try and help these people and that the Iraqi Army isn't worth anything.  We hear it all the time, and I think the proof positive was right here.  If I could ask people to identify themselves, wait for their microphone, and keep your questions and statement in the form of a question.  MR. LITTLE:  Thanks.  General, I'm Rick Little (ph.) with the Dallas Morning News.  GENERAL PETRAEUS:  Yep.  MR. LITTLE:  I want to ask you a question that I heard posed earlier on in the Iraq campaign.  I think it's a question that's on the minds of a lot of Americans now with the casualties that are being suffered over there.  And I think that you've been--there's no person I can think of who's better qualified to answer the question.  And the question is tell me how this ends?  GENERAL PETRAEUS:  Well, you may know actually I posed that question early on, if anybody read Rick Atkinson's book.  The way that it ends is with Iraqis truly in control of a sovereign Iraq, with Iraqi security forces shouldering the burden of security, with rights for all Iraqis, and a country that certainly doesn't allow its territory to be used for a base for the export of terrorism or extremism.  MR. LITTLE:  (Off mike.)  (Inaudible.)  GENERAL PETRAEUS:  Well, you asked me how it ends.  I mean that's how it ends.  I mean I explained one element of how we get there, in fact.  And again, I would remind you that this is one of the key elements.  But there are others that are extremely critical as well.  And again, I think critically important are the actions of Iraqi leaders at the national level to hold the country together, to ensure that they reach out to those who feel that they don't have a stake in the success of the new Iraq, to provide courageous, decisive, leadership, marked by integrity.  And so that's a key element.  At the provincial level, ensuring that provincial leaders don't give in to, if you will, winner takes all politics; politicize the security forces, the police chief and so forth.  And the ministries, developing and fostering the development of the capacity and capability.  Remember:  all resources in Iraq flow through the ministries.  The province governors and councils have very little resources.  They have the authority under the law, the transitional administrative law, to generate resources.  Very, very few of them have availed themselves of that opportunity, because of the unpopularity of it.  So any resources that hit the provinces go through the ministries to the Director Generals of those ministry activities.  And so it is hugely important that they be able to deploy the resources.  Iraq is not a donor country, by the way.  I think you all know it's not just potentially rich.  It has considerable income, at least $500 million I think it's accurate to say each week, depending on the price of oil and how much they export.  And Dr. Chalabi has been pretty instrumental in getting a lot more of that going out.  But they then have to use these resources. And the way they are used is through the ministries, whether it be housing, finance, of course, interior, defense, planning, reconstruction and so forth.  Within the security forces, of course, courageous leadership--competent from the front, selfless and so forth.  And those are critical elements to this.  They've got to create a political environment that is much more supportive of the security forces in those four to six provinces in which the insurgents are operating.  Unemployment has to come down, because there are an awful lot of guns for hire out there right now.  Basic services, of course, have to be improved.  By the way, I looked, and I think it was 12 to 14 hours of electricity nationwide yesterday, for whatever that's worth.  So again, all of these different aspects are very, very important in the overall way ahead.  And it will be Iraqi leaders who, in fact, are the keys to achieving those conditions.  Okay.  Right here.  MR. PHELPS:  I'm Tim Phelps (ph.), a reporter with Newsday.  General, what proportion of those 115 plus battalions are largely made up of Peshmerga or one of the Shi'a militias?  And are you concerned about it?  GENERAL PETRAEUS:  First of all, the policy in Iraqi under what is called the Transition and Reintegration of Militias program trim, which is overseen, by the way, by TRC, the Transition Reintegration Committee, is, in fact, to reach out and has been to recruit former militia members as individuals, not as units.  So the Badr Corps never came in as a unit into the security forces.  As I mentioned, in fact, with the national forces, and again if you focus on the army battalions, particularly those that I identified as national, and the police battalions, the effort has been by the Iraqis' sensitivity to having them reflect the general population.  That has not been as successful in certain areas where intimidation of Sunni Arabs was the highest.  And so, for example, the Third Iraqi Division, which was up in the western end of a province, which started out with a very substantial component of Sunni Arabs, lost a number of those during the very, very intimidation of last November, December, and even into January; but then has regained some of those.  And, in fact, that's why I mentioned specifically the effort to target with recruiting Sunni Arabs to again, in a sense, repopulate some of those units.  If a unit was formed during a period when the Sunni Arabs were not participating, not just in the election back in 30 January of last year--of this past year, but also weren't volunteering, then obviously that unit would have a much higher component typically of Shi'a Arab, but also perhaps some former--maybe former Peshmerga or just Sunni Kurds.  We are--I mean that's why they are--the Iraqis are, in fact, reaching out to the Sunni Arabs in this regard, because it is a concern.  There is a concern clearly about what you might term conflicted loyalties.  I mean I think we saw some of this in Basra recently, but I will also tell that my sense is--but I'd probably defer to some of the Iraqis in here--that Iraqi leaders can handle that kind of thing.  And I think they demonstrated that they did.  There will be drama.  There will be perhaps even shooting, perhaps even bloodshed.  It will seem very, very worrisome, and it may well be.  But they can handle that kind of situation.  What they can't handle clearly is this absolutely barbaric foreign fighter, largely now increasingly important foreign fighter component and obviously a Sunni Arab based insurgency of former Saddamists and others who are either tacitly helping--sometimes actively assisting or, again, guns for hire.  So that would be the way I would get at that.  And again, I mean there's a sensitivity to that.  There's a much more rigorous vetting process on the police side of the house that was implemented about--probably about six months ago or so, that, in fact the Minister of Interior has explained a couple of times to folks, and he, in fact, has vowed more recently, in fact--and there has been an effort called the Qualifying Committee for almost a year that is looking at all Ministry of Interior employees to determine are they qualified to remain in the service, and, if not, to provide a stipend to them so that they can leave.  Yeah.  Do you want to follow up?  Just a quick follow-up?  MR. PHELPS:  But are there not a large number of those battalions that are loyal to one particular militia or another?  GENERAL PETRAEUS:  No.  I would not characterize it that way.  I mean the army battalions, regardless of what their composition might be, you know, 80 plus army battalions in the fight--well over 80--they are responding to national direction, and they have been moved around.  And they have fought effectively, again, at varying levels of, if you will capability, because they are at varying levels of age, if you will.  I mean a battalion that just came out--and I think again that really is important to give the Iraqis credit for what they have done.  It--just if you look at just transforming our own Army, you know, I brought the 101st Airborne Division back in mid-February of 2004, and it then took about a year just to transform the unit.  That's a unit that was already combat-hardened, arguably one of the best divisions in the world at that time in terms of its capability, experience, equipment, everything else, and it still took over a year just to sort of reorganize somewhat into slightly different organizations, to spool back up, to go back through training centers and all the rest of that.  So I mean this--you saw what they had last summer at the transition to sovereignty, and it wasn't much.  And you see what they have now, and it is really a very substantial amount, even though, again, the bulk of them in the fighting alongside, but a substantial number in the lead.  So, yes, sir?  I'm sorry.  Right in front of you just first.  I'll get to you next.  MR. KAGAN:  General Petraeus, Fred Kagan here at AEI.  GENERAL PETRAEUS:  Hi.  Good to read your stuff.  MR. KAGAN:  Thanks.  GENERAL PETRAEUS:  You look too young for writing all that stuff, by the way.  MR. KAGAN:  Don't believe it--I put on good makeup.  (Laughter.)  MR. KAGAN:  I'm curious.  You listed a number of threats, potential enemies that the Iraqi regime is facing--Baathists  and extremists and so forth--  GENERAL PETRAEUS:  I'd say Saddamists, by the way.  I think it's very, very important to make that distinction--  MR. KAGAN:  (In progress.)--think of those is actually the greatest threat, the most important--  GENERAL PETRAEUS:  Yeah.  That's a great question.  MR. KAGAN:  --and is the Iraqi Army that you're building optimized to deal with that threat?  GENERAL PETRAEUS:  Yeah.  I think you have to break it up into in a sense to a short-term threat and a long-term threat.  And I think the short-term threat clearly--the major short-term threat is the foreign fighters, the Zaqawaris--if you will, Al Qaeda Iraq and all that is under that umbrella.  Take Ansar Al-Suna, Ansar El-Islama, all these other--what really are extremist organizations and what have been facilitating the movement into the country of foreigners who are willing to blow themselves up for some unknown and largely unexplained ideology.  That is so crucially important because that A) creates a drumbeat through which progress seldom seems to be able to penetrate, so what you hear on CNN every day.  It's amazing.  I mean every time I've come back to the United States during the past two and a half years, I'm back a few days, and I end up e-mailing somebody over there and say what in the world is going on.  I mean the place is on fire.  It sounds like it's all--Baghdad is exploding, and they say, as you recall, things appear much more manageable when you're on the ground than when you're reading about it back there, because, again--and I'm not trying to just--I think it's hugely significant, and so it's not just that they're getting it wrong or something like that, but that, in fact, they're reporting very significant explosions, losses of life, and so forth.  And that has to be reduced.  The long-term threat, though, is probably, again, if you will, the Sunni Arab--largely Sunni Arab supported insurgency with the Saddamists in there.  And then certainly there are other concerns out there, such as former militias or still extent militias, the Mati Army (ph.), Sadr's militia, perhaps the Badr Corps, perhaps some of the other elements out there.  And so that is a challenge as well.  Again, I think the Iraqis can handle certain of those as long as there is a resistance to the, if you will, the temptation to employ short-term expedience, such as to you a militia, which I think short-term might produce a desirable result, but long-term produces real challenges that would be tough to deal with.  So that's the way I'd try to break that down if that's satisfying to you I hope.  So.  Yeah.  Right behind you there.  Okay.  MR. AHMED:  Ali Al-Ahmed (ph.) from the Gulf Institute.  My question is I haven't seen your charge any breakdown or any grouping for people who would--as you know, Iraq is awash of weapons and explosions--and explosives.  Why don't we have a brigade which will not need much training, people who would after you go and to specifically and look for weapons caches and so on.  GENERAL PETRAEUS:  Yeah.  Yeah.  MR. AHMED:  Because if they don't have their caches, they cannot do suicide bombing.  GENERAL PETRAEUS:  Yeah.  MR. AHMED:  The second part--  GENERAL PETRAEUS:  Let me address that first, because I think there's a mythology out there that you can snap your fingers and because somebody has an AK-47 at home and perhaps had some military training at one point in time is going to be a competent security force member.  And I hate to disagree with you, but every effort to develop that kind of homegrown force, like the Fallujah Brigade, even the Iraqi national guard units in Anbar Province, and in a variety of other locations, they generally have not worked.  And what they are at the end of the day is an armed neighborhood watch, which is one step from a militia, and the armed neighborhood watch, they'll create security in that neighborhood, but then all of sudden the other guys want an armed neighborhood watch.  And then they start to collide.  And then, oh, by the way, this is my street.  No, it's actually my--and so now we have internal conflict, and, oh, by the way, all of a sudden, then they're going to see Jeez, I didn't get my pay this month.  Why I don't just shake down all the people driving through our area, and, in fact, supplement my income.  I can--I mean it just is a spiral downward that again is a short-term expedient that we probably should avoid.  MR. AHMED:  That was not my question.  My question was a force that is not armed even--just to clean up and look for caches and find them.  Basically, reconnaissance--just to look for caches.  GENERAL PETRAEUS:  Well, I'll tell you that we--when I was with the 101st Airborne Division Commander, we went out of our way--we did not have a weapons buy-back program, but we did have a rewards program for weapons, and we took all kinds of weapons off the street doing that.  I will also say, though, that the caches out there, and the amounts of weaponry that did, in fact, drift out of or actually were taken out of these massive, massive ammo storage dumps in the very beginning, sometimes in the advance of liberation are staggering, and it will take indeed a long time to police them up.  But the numbers of KIPS (ph.) as an indicator for whatever it's worth, you know, I don't think that there is any or much support for the insurgents at this point in time.  I mean I don't think any of us have seen anybody dancing by the side of the road by a blown up Humvee the way they're--for a while, there was temporarily some of that a while back.  And I think they, the Iraqis are fed up with the insurgents and certainly the foreign fighters every bit as much as all of us are.  So again, I think that sort of local--now, certainly if it's an unarmed neighborhood watch, that's something that that we would entertain and did, and you know we're willing to assist.  But it's that arming of neighborhood watches that are one step from militia that we actually feared, and I think most of the Iraqis leaders generally agreed, although, there was a tug in that direction because they obviously want to do something right away as well.  Part of the problem is that this stuff takes time, and it takes a particular amount of time when you are doing it in the face of a very, very barbaric enemy, who's trying to blow up every step of the process.  I have been told that that was the last one I'm afraid and that, you know, the hook and the gong and all the others are going off, and so I would thank you again for your attention.  (Applause.)  MS. PLETKA:  Thank you very much.  Can I ask everybody to stay in their seats for our next panel?  We're going to move directly to that.  Don't move.  Thank you.  MR. RUBIN:  Salem, sorry.  We're going to get started.  MS. PLETKA:  Can I ask some of the people in the back of the room, who are over there, to move over here?  Come on.  Come on.  Come on.  Come no.  Come on.  Come on, guys.  I know you're comfortable.  These seats are good.  Do you want me to play music to see how fast you can reseat yourselves?  Nobody is going to do it.  Have we got a (inaudible)?  I'm not going to start until everybody sits down.  Thank you.  First of all, I apologize for hustling all of you, and I do appreciate your patience.  I think that that was a very worthwhile effort.  Thank you so much to our panel for their patience, and being at the end of a very long day, but I think a very, very worthwhile effort.  I just want to put in two words of housekeeping, because I have a sense that at the end, after Michael makes his closing remarks, you are going to be on your way out.  And I want to make sure that we thank you, our audience, our many panelists, most of whom have come a long, long way to be with us; also to thank our own people here at AEI, who really made this all possible.  The people who work in our kitchen who did our wonderful lunch, all of them who served it; our conferences staff.  Our translators.  Molly McHugh (ph.), and Rachel Huff, who as, may of you know, made this absolutely possible.  Bilal (ph.), who did so much translation for us on the telephone, and schlepped around helping us get visas.  And anybody else I might have missed.  These things don't happen with a huge amount of work, and I want to make sure that our gratitude is expressed.  And now, Michael has got his finger on the button, on the button.  Go.  MR. RUBIN:  Thank you.  I want to welcome you all to our final panel.  I promise on this panel, there will be absolutely no PowerPoints.  And what I'm going to do is just briefly introduce our panelists, and then we will get started.  We have a whole range of current issues which are going to be key as Iraq gets moving after the referendum and as it works to build a new government and new code of law and interpretation of that constitution.  First, I want to introduce very briefly, because the full biographies are in your packets, Ammar Al Shahbander, who is now the Iraq Country Director for the Institute of War and Peace Reporting.  After him, Mishkat Al-Moumin, the former Iraqi Minister of Environment, will be speaking.  And finally, Salem Chalabi will be speaking.  I'm going to ask Ammar to speak about some of the issues related to freedom of the press, both in theory and in practice.  Mishkat will talk about some of the issues confronting Iraqi women, and Salem will talk about both the upcoming trial of Saddam Hussein and some of the issues relating to justice.  And with that, and with no further adieu, I'd like to turn the floor over to Ammar for about eight minutes.  And following the presentations, we will have time for questions.  I do--for those of you who have seen me moderate panels before, I do tend to be quite strict with using the power I have very briefly while on stage to make sure things run on time.  Ammar?  MR. AL SHAHBANDER:  Thank you, Michael.  Thank you all for staying.  I know that everyone is tired after such a long day, so I'll be very brief.  After the fall of the regime, everyone thought that Iraq was going to be some sort of a media safe haven in the Middle East.  And definitely media outlets, whether print, broadcast, or online, started to mushroom all over the country.  However, there are a number of obstacles to the development of international standards, fair and objective media in Iraq.  The most important two obstacles are 1) the development of a patronage system amongst the media workers.  Unfortunately, the majority of, if not all, media outlets are supported either by a political faction or individuals with certain agendas and interests.  The second factor is the self-censorship.  The majority of editors and reporters, because of the long history of oppression and of being trained within fascist media organizations, exercise a lot of self-censorship.  So we rarely find reporters who are willing to go to the length necessary to expose certain truths or certain stories.  A number of international organizations have been trying to help develop the Iraqi media by training, by financial support, by capacity building.  However, the challenges continue to be the same.  As I said, the patronage system and the self-censorship.  I promised to be brief, so I'm going to stop at this point.  If you have any questions, please come forward and ask them.  MR. RUBIN:  Okay.  That was very brief, and what I'm going to do is, without further adieu, turn the floor over to Mishkat who can talk about the status of women, and then I would invite you to answer any specific questions about the freedom of the media and how the media is progressing during questions and answers following the panel.  Mishkat?  MS. MOUMIN:  Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for being here.  There is a question that is going on on the minds of Iraqi men and women, and maybe in the national level and in the international level.  Why women should run for an office?  Why should she be a judge, a minister?  Why should be--have women in the parliament.  This question has been long asked and maybe never answered.  I mean people look at it, don't we have enough trouble?  So as for those women to come and give us so much trouble and noise?  I think the simple answer for this question is that putting barriers in the front of women's participation in public life, the same barriers will be put in front of any other social groups that want to participate in public life.  And by doing so, we will build up a new other dictatorship instead of democracy.  Democracy cannot be built if we exclude a social group from participating in public life.  So many steps have been taken to empower women and to encourage them to participate in public life with the fall of the regime.  And, yet, Iraqi women have been so close to the area that never have been reached by Iraqi women; that is the area of decision making.  We are so close as Iraqi women, but, yet, we are not in the core of that area.  We are very close, but we did not enter inside and participate effectively in the decision making process.  But yet, the process started since three years only.  We started to see women as ministers.  We started to see women as ambassadors, as general directors, and that was impossible during Saddam's regime.  As to the constitution, I think there are so many positive sides in that constitution.  For the first time in the whole Arabian area, a woman is capable of passing her own nationality to her own children, and that has not been adopted in any other constitutions of those in the region.  Yet, the flip side of that constitution is women or different kind of women may be subject to different kinds of family loads.  And that was the danger or the fear that so many women activists were actually afraid of it might happen.  And I think this is the time for the international community to monitor this situation, because good governance cannot be achieved without involving women and empowering them in the process.  Otherwise, we will be facing another dictatorship.  And I always believed in the capability of the Iraqi women, and I'm pretty much sure that she will achieve something.  She's in the right track, and she will be reaching the right results.  Thank you.  MR. RUBIN:  Okay.  Another brief speech, which leaves us time for Salem Chalabi to give us an update on the details that are affecting the judiciary.  MR. CHALABI:  Thank you, and thank Danny and the American Enterprise Institute.  I wanted to touch on I guess three things.  One was just the general human rights situation in Iraq.  I see that on paper the TAU and then the permanent constitution now, the emergency laws that were put in place provide many protections for human rights in Iraq.  In practice, though, the situation has not been so favorable on the human rights side.  It's somewhat troubling, but one needs to look at this issue in the context of planning and throughout the day the discussions have been--you know, there were discussions about bad planning and so on, but in planning the transition in Iraq, I guess we did not--a mistake of ours was not to take into account the intensity of the insurgency that was taking place.  And so I mean I briefly would reiterate when Saddam Hussein was captured, the document--I was able to look at some of the documents he had under his control.  And really it looked very apparent that he had a post-war strategy rather than a war strategy.  And the post-war strategy was to create an insurgency.  This I think--this lack of planning and the intensity of the insurgency has led to the police services and intelligence services in Iraq to kind of go back to the old practices that they had.  As General Petraeus said just now, you know, in initial planning on the education of the police and so on, they'd use the Bosnian model, which focused a lot on human rights.  So in Iraq, because of the intensity of the insurgency, they had to move away from that.  And so abuses were carried out by Iraqis also, you know, the Abu Ghraib debacle was very prevalent in giving the view that human rights are not being protected.  There is a Ministry of Human Rights, but the ministers have not really--I mean with the exception of my friend Bakhtiar Amin (ph.) in the last government, this government, the ministers have--and the first cabinet--the ministers have been not as active as somebody with the experience of Bakhtiar.  And this is unfortunate.  And I mean clearly the major party carrying out the abuses are the terrorists, and there's been a lot of discussion on that.  And unfortunately, these protections have really fallen by the wayside.  The protections in the TAU have, by and large, especially in this cabinet, fallen by the wayside.  I then move--I mean one of the ways that had been envisioned you know for the protection of human rights is the judiciary.  And again, in theory, there is an idea of an independent judiciary in Iraq.  I mean before the fall of Saddam's regime, there was something called the Justice Council, which was headed by the Minister of Justice, so in practice there was no separation between the judiciary and the executive.  In October 2003, a Judicial Council was put in place.  It was headed by the President of the Court of Causation, who is equivalent to the Supreme Court, you know, the head of the Supreme Court here in the U.S.  And it included 12 other judges.  Therefore, theoretically, there became a separation between the judiciary and the executive, especially the Ministry of Justice.  In practice, the lines of demarcation haven't been very clear and, again, in practice, judges have unfortunately, and this is the practice in many of the countries that have undergone similar transitions, the judges have lacked the confidence in themselves, and the practice of acting independently.  And so they have not been willing to stand up to politicians in many instances.  And they realize that they need political support in everyday matters.  I raise some kind of problems with the judiciary.  I mean one very well known problem in the judiciary is raised by the case of Mukta El Sadr and the indictment against him, issued by a judge.  It has never been carried out.  And it is rather somewhat embarrassing I think for very senior political officials to meet with somebody who's indicted for a murder and yet nobody has the political will to take the step forward.  So in practice, the judiciary has moved forward a lot, and I really am proud of the judiciary; but within a context of working in an area where judges have not been historically known to act very independently.  And also there has been a discussion earlier about federalism, and I don't want to go back into how the delineation of the judiciary is, but the constitution as well as the TAU had the concept of this higher judicial council, which is to consist of, you know, to kind of govern the whole judiciary in Iraq.  But the lines of demarcation, again, have not been clear.  And so we currently have courts of--the--we have courts of causation in Baghdad and a separate one in--and courts of causation are the highest courts.  And then we have separate ones in Kurdistan.  The lines are not so clear between them.  The ones in Kurdistan in practice are to act as the highest judicial body in Kurdistan.  A federal court has been created.  Again, the issue was left in the constitution for a law to lay out the powers of a federal court.  And again, it's not so clear what the integration is between the two judicial bodies in Kurdistan and the rest of Iraq.  I want to finally just talk briefly about the trial of Saddam Hussein, which I know people are somewhat getting interested in as the time is getting closer.  A bill has been put in front of the Iraqi Transitional Assembly to amend the statute of the Iraqi Special Tribunal.  It has had its first reading.  It's now in the process of having its second reading before it gets published.  So it's not yet in place.  The bill amended briefly the statute of the Iraqi Special Tribunal.  A number of things are somewhat troubling about this.  One is it's providing less international involvement than we had hoped.  The international involvement was going to get--is to be curtailed among the judges.  And in certain instances, it has taken away some of the due process provisions, and, to me, in certain instances, I feel somewhat embarrassed to talk about the due process for somebody like Saddam Hussein in sitting in the same room as somebody like Sofia (ph.), whose father was brutally killed by the regime.  But one needs to really try to protect this due process.  When we first were putting together the Tribunal, we were wondering--we wanted to make the Tribunal as the first step towards kind of transitioning Iraq to a country that respected the rule of law.  And we thought that we should really put in place some very strict due process provisions for the defendants, including these most heinous of defendants.  And by putting that in place, we were--I mean I recall in Amara, in Southern Iraq, there was a demonstration in which somebody burned my effigy, thinking that, you know, I was protecting Saddam Hussein; that I did a deal with the government to protect him, because I was insisting on these due process rights for him.  But in practice, you know, I mean we put this in place.  The Tribunal has gone on quite slowly, and there's been tremendous political pressure to get it to move quicker.  One only needs to do a Google search to see the number of times members of the cabinet have said trials are starting in the next few weeks, and so on.  And finally, the Tribunal has said that it is starting soon.  The importance of this draft bill is that the defense team is going to focus--Saddam's defense team and the jail case is initially going to focus on the jurisdiction of this tribunal.  They're going to look at the laws that put it in place and if we rely on the statute of the IST, which was passed by the Governing Council and then signed off by Ambassador Bremer, the defense team is going to start talking about the legitimacy of the invasion and whether the power--and the U.S. had power to do this and to pass these laws.  And so the--I advised at the time the Assembly to pass a new law that effectively looks like the old law, but is passed by a body that's elected, an Iraqi body that's elected.  And unfortunately, they're doing this.  I hope this gets done before the trial starts, because, otherwise, things can get very messy.  There are some problem, as I mentioned, with the Tribunal.  First is this issue of the due process.  I mean these guys may be brought to trial quite soon, and they haven't looked at any--and their lawyers have not really looked at the evidence that is against them.  And one reason they couldn't--you know evidence can be given to them is because of the security situation.  Witnesses could get killed, et cetera.  The second problem I see is that evidence is very--is still very controlled by the U.S. Government-the documentary evidence is under the ISG, which is, I mean, most of the documents are in Qatar, and Iraqis are not allowed to look at them.  And this is a big, kind of sovereignty issue.  Again, who do these documents belong to?  But in reality, it's an FBI team that gets to look at them.  They have them translated, and, to the extent they see something relevant, they pass it on to the Regime Crimes Liaison Office, which then condenses it and passes it on to the investigative judges.  And this process is--I mean the judges are not really in control of it, and so they've had to rely on testimonial evidence and effectively that's the basis of this first charge brought against Saddam Hussein, as well as the second charge, which I believe may be brought down relatively soon, which has to do with the Faili Kurds.  I hope I didn't overstep my timing.  So I'd be happy to answer any questions.  MR. RUBIN:  What I'd like to do--  (Applause.)  MR. RUBIN:  I'd like to open up the floor to questions.  As always, please wait for the microphone and then identify yourself as much for the record as for anything else, and then we will begin.  Let's start in the back and move our way forward.  MS.          :  (Off mike.)  (Inaudible.)  MR. RUBIN:  Can you--sorry, repeat it?  Make sure the microphone is on.  MS. HOSANI:  Mila Hosani (ph.).  My question is for Ammar and maybe Salem as well.  MR. RUBIN:  Could you just add your affiliation?  MS. HOSANI:  I'm a journalist, independent.  You spoke of the self-censorship that goes on for Iraqi journalists--reporters not willing to go to lengths to investigate.  What is the Iraqi government doing to promote media laws that will encourage journalists to know that they will not be prosecuted for actually doing their jobs?  I mean is there--are there shield laws in the works?  And what kind of anti-corruption laws for journalists are there also in the works to keep them from all the corruption that goes on--money (inaudible) et cetera.  MR. RUBIN:  Thank you.  Ammar?  MR. AL SHAHBANDER:  Okay.  I can start with (inaudible).  Media in Iraq today is not regulated, so there is no libel law.  And everyone who wants to start a newspaper doesn't even need to incorporate it as a company or a corporation.  At the same time, there are no rules or legislation protecting the journalists when they do their job.  So it's basically the wild, wild west out there.  Those who dare might get killed, might get persecuted.  An example is--if we take an example from international journalists, Steven Vincent (ph.) wrote an article about the Iranian influence in Basra, and he got killed a few days after that.  His translator got killed.  And another Iraqi, local Iraqi journalist, got killed in Basra.  So basically, the protection is not there.  Not even that--and a good example would be the IMN, the Iraqi Media Network.  When the Iraqi Media Network was started in 2003, the idea was that it would be Iraq's PBS.  Unfortunately, both Prime Minister Allawi and Prime Minister Jafari have tried to control it; use it for propaganda purposes.  And today, Prime Minister Jafari's advisors they even control which types of shows and programs are getting broadcasted.  In a number of events, one of his advisors actually had to make a phone call and stop certain shows.  So the media is not at all as free as everyone thinks.  In terms of legislation in the pipeline, I am not aware of any.  I don't know if.  Yeah.  I hope that answers your question.  MR. RUBIN:  Salem, do you have anything to add?  MR. CHALABI:  Yeah.  I do.  I mean I think actually the laws in Kurdistan are so much more advanced than in the rest of the country.  And you do need--you know there are laws to protect journalists there.  But I mean they're not as developed as you would see here or in any western country.  So maybe Kurdistan would be a model, but in the center of the country, there isn't any.  MR. RUBIN:  Okay.  Yes?  And then I'll move to the back afterwards.  MS. CROCKETT:  Michelle Crockett (ph.).  I'm a student at SAIS.  My question is for Ms. Moumin.  As you know, there are many women and other people who have said that the new constitution does not robustly protect women's rights.  There are others who say, well, this is not of great concern right now, because what the new constitution does or should do is set forth democratic institutions and processes whereby women can obtain the rights they want.  My question is do you agree with the latter view?  Do you disagree, and why?  MS. MOUMIN:  I think there are two things to clarify that issue.  First of all, in the constitution, there are so many human rights that are acknowledged for both men and women.  But yet, the fear that is on--and it has really some logic sense for it to exist--is that we will face the following:  If the Iraqi family law has not been adopted as a federal law.  It means that each region has a right to apply its own law.  So by the end of the day, you will see that in Kurdistan, we will see a much liberal.  In the West, we will see another strict version, based on the Sunni version, and in the South, we will see a Shi'a version.  That will lead to a very significant result.  You will see that each sector we won't marry from the other one, because they will be afraid of being subject to other laws.  The whole issue is not clarified, so it depends upon the new government.  How will the new government deal with that?  That's why the fear of women activists is there.  For me personally, I understand their fear.  But yet, the problem is that we need not only one sole provision that realizes women's rights.  We need those rights to be adopted to every single law.  This is the main core.  This is the main issue.  So to a certain level, there are fears, and there are reasonable fears.  The other side of the moon, if you would like, is that there are some very well acknowledged rights.  So this is the whole deal.  It's a whole package.  You cannot separate it.  MR. RUBIN:  Okay.  MS. MOUMIN:  For me, as I told you, I wish we could have more.  The more we have, the more we will be a democratic country.  MR. RUBIN:  Ammar?  MR. AL SHAHBANDER:  I have a comment on that issue.  Unfortunately, the majority of the women's groups in Iraq are still fighting the battles of yesterday.  The constitution is over.  The battle for a constitution.  Most likely, it's going to be accepted, and I think the women's movement should prepare for the coming legislation.  What kind of legislation we want to see.  What kind of people we want to see in these positions that are basically going to be manned by different individuals, like the Supreme Court and other positions.  MR. RUBIN:  I would just add that throughout the Middle East women are fighting for rights they've never had.  The only exception to that so far is in Iran, where women are fighting for rights that were taken away from them.  One of the big barometers with which the liberation of Iraq will be judged is whether it's in the legal code and the constitution and interpretations thereof how the women of Iraq fare in the future.  And with that, to the lady in blue.  MS. NASHIBANISWIA:  (Speaking in Arabic.)  Should I speak in English?  I think it's better.  Okay.  I just want to comment on Mrs. Al Moumin's speech about the Iraqi women's rights.  Yes, there are many obvious rights mentioned in the constitution, and I totally agree with Mr. Ammar, when he said that the fight over the constitution is almost finished.  But the problem is that now, in that, we witness and we, in fact, we are afraid in Iraq is about the legislation because we are thankful that after a very hard work, we succeeded to ensure the 25 percentage of women in the National Assembly.  But, in fact, now we are finished with the quantity, with the number, but our present and future real fight is going to be with the quality, because we, in fact, we are in need of a majority of women, of 25 percent women, who would defend the rights of women, who would participate in putting the laws that serve and help their sisters.  We don't want women only that will share the minds of men in the National Assembly.  And they cannot do anything for women.  So the matter is now, and this is very obvious, and it should be very understandable that we need now the quality of women.  It's not only--you know, it's not only a quantity, and we shall be satisfied and happy about it.  But we shall need the quality that really ensures that there is going to be right rights--  MR RUBIN:  It's a point well taken.  MS. NASHIBANISWIA:  Yeah.  Right rights for women.  MR. RUBIN:  Excellent.  Thank you.  I'm going to--  MS. NASHIBANISWIA:  Thank you very much.  MR. RUBIN:  --move on.  It's a point well taken.  And what I'd like to do is move on to Katrine Michael (ph.) over here and then move forward to the final two questions.  Over.  Yes  Please.  MS. MICHAEL:  Katrine Michael from Kurdish Human Rights.  My question to Mishkat Moumin.  We talk about the constitution. As they mentioned, it's past, so we are not going to talk about yesterday.  We are going to talk about the future.  I would love to hear from you what specific we can do to push the women's issue.  You mentioned international community, to have some pressure from international community.  My question is inside is need to have pressure on political parties?  Is need to have a pressure or individual men that they have open minded?  Is need to have civil society to be more active?  I would love to hear from you specifically.  Thank you very much.  MS. MOUMIN:  Thank you very much.  I think the best way to do it, if you want to start from the national ground up to the international ground, is first of all we, the women's movement, should gather ourselves and organize ourselves to achieve a certain goal.  That is, as the lady in the back said, that we should make sure that she who represented us will defend us.  This is one way to do it.  The other way to do it is by 100 percent involving the international community.  The more open you are, the more results you will achieve.  But you will be--you should be able enough to stand for your own code.  Oh, okay, the constitution has bad sides and good sides as well.  How can we maximize the good so as the bad side of it or the negative side of it won't be noticed or won't have effect?  This is one way of doing it.  We have to make sure that in the court or the Supreme Court that is going to monitor the implementation of the constitution we will have qualified people, whether men or women.  The most important thing here is to have qualified people.  I am sure that, as well as there are unqualified women, there are unqualified men as well.  So it's a matter of qualification.  And the more open you are to the international society, the more good results that you achieved.  MR. RUBIN:  Yes.  Pierre.  Please wait for the microphone.  And then also give your affiliation, which I just cut you off from doing.  MR. JOHAD:  Okay.  Maurice Johad (ph.) from the Middle East Media Research Institute.  My question is to Mr. Salem Chalabi.  How the decision was taken by choosing as to jail as the issue to bring Saddam  Hussein on to trial, and not bigger things like Anfal, like Halabja and so on?  MR. CHALABI:  The answer is actually very simple.  When we were--we had something like--when we set up the IST, we started looking at 14 types of crimes.  And something like the Anfal is such a huge undertaking.  It took place over two years, in which over 4,000 villages were wiped out.  You've heard of the chemical attacks on Halabja, et cetera.  The evidence gathering in the IST Office in the North was tremendous--I mean the number of people who gave testimony and so on.  The jail was a simpler case.  It was--we wanted to try it as a simple thing.  It was a very specific act in a specific village, in which we had documentary evidence that showed that particular units of one of the security entities was involved, and where the orders came from.  It was a very simple case.  And so we thought, let's try it with something simple to get people trained for that.  The--you know, other campaigns, I mean are so large.  I mean the other one that was somewhat close is the--it's not directly part of Halabja--it's not directly part of the Anfal.  It's just the Halabja attack, because, again, we have evidence that--we have a tape recording of a conference call between Ali Hassan al Majid and Saddam Hussein on this issue.  MR. JOHAD:  On Anfal or--  MR. CHALABI:  On Halabja specifically.  And so, as a result, I mean we just thought that this was a simple thing, and that's why we started with it.  MR. RUBIN:  What I'd actually like to do is I'll leave the last question to Salem, and then I just want to make a couple closing remarks.  MR.          :  Yes.  I had a question for you.  MS. MOUMIN:  Please.  MR.          :  It's a comment and a question.  One is I've sensed throughout the last two years that the principal people fighting for a liberal democratic Iraq and protecting women's rights have been the Kurds.  I mean unfortunately, among the political groupings, the liberal agenda has been kind of weakened tremendously by an Islamic agenda.  With the way the constitution works, the issues of family law and so on could be moved to the provinces.  MS. MOUMIN:  Yes.  MR. CHALABI:  And so the Kurds may not be there anymore to fight the big fight on behalf of women's rights.  MS. MOUMIN:  Absolutely.  MR. CHALBI:  How worried are you about that?  And the second is I look at, you know, on El Iraqia sometimes, and I see a particular corner of the Transitional National Assembly with a lot of abayas, and I don't mean to be rude to anybody, but I see, you know, al-Aziz Hakim nodding in a particular vote and everybody's hands go up among these women.  And you mentioned it's an issue of quality, and the lady there mentioned an issue of quality.  What has been your experience of the women in the Assembly in general?  MS. MOUMIN:  The problem is that those women are not representing women.  They are representing a political idea, a political party.  So actually, women's issues are being--or by the end of the day, we don't have representatives there.  They simply represent the idea of the party that brought them there.  This is one issue.  And, again, there are some votes saying that those women are not qualified.  Okay.  But there are also men whom are not qualified.  It's a matter of the manner, the way, the method that those people were brought in by the end of the day to the Assembly.  MR. RUBIN:  With regard to the Kurds?  MS. MOUMIN:  With regard to the Kurds, I think I'm pretty much worried about that issue, because if we don't have people whom are fighting for liberal Iraq, and the Kurds were simply carrying the flag.  Then who will do it?  So by simply we will end up having the whole issue in the hands of the new government.  If we manage to get a secular government, then we are safe.  There is no harm done.  And when I mean no harm done, not only to women.  It's not a women's issue.  It's a family issue and basically it's a society issue.  When you manage to secure women, and to give them their rights as citizens, you give rights as well to children, because they are associated with them.  And you will give a right also to me, because when you have a stabilized family, it means that you are having a stabilized society.  So it's--we are putting the whole egg in one basket, let's say.  It depends totally on the new government.  We don't have an option with that.  MR. RUBIN:  Thank you.  I just would like to spend maybe three minutes trying to sum up what we heard today and look at the situation in Iraq from a bit of a distance.  Five years ago, when I first went to Iraq, when I first went specifically to Iraqi Kurdistan, I used to hang out along what was then the Green Line and listen to Iraqis who were coming from Baghdad and elsewhere in areas under Saddam Hussein's control and often times I would try to listen to some of the jokes they were saying, because you can learn a lot from local humor.  And some of you may have heard me say this joke before, but I'll repeat it briefly again:  About how Saddam Hussein is going hunting with two bodyguards.  And a bird flies overhead.  One of the bodyguards shoots.  The bird falls down dead.  A couple minutes later another bird flies overhead, and--that falls down.  A few more minutes pass, a bird flies overhead.  Saddam Hussein takes his revolver and he empties it at the bird as it flies off into the distance.  And the blood drained from both body guards' faces.  And one said to the other, stammering out, "It's a miracle, Mr. President; we've never seen dead birds fly before."  The point of this is if you told this in Saddam Hussein's Iraq, you could be killed.  Society has fundamentally changed.  Last month, when I returned to Iraq, I heard a different joke.  And it was about Ibriham al-Jaafari, the ruler of Iraq now, the prime minister, when he came to the office on his first day.  In his office he found a rooster, a dog and a donkey.  And he said to the rooster, "What are you doing here?"  And the rooster said, "Well, Mr. Prime Minister, there's so much work to be done in the reconstruction of Iraq, that I'm here to make sure you wake up early every morning to get the job done."  And then he asked the dog, "What are you doing here?"  And the dog said, "Well, security and terrorism are such big problems here, I'm here to make sure you're so well protected so that you can get the job done."  And then he asked the donkey, "What are you doing here?"  And the donkey said, "I really don't know.  They dumped me in this office the same as you."  (Laughter.)  MR. RUBIN:  The point of this is just a fundamental transformation of the way people are allowed to express themselves that sometimes when we cover Iraq day by day in the media, television cameras don't lie.  Most journalists don't lie.  But they also don't necessarily give the full perspective.  When I look at what's going on in Iraq, now when I go back for my fairly regular visits, I see things that I hear described back in Washington and elsewhere in the West, very differently.  For example, the Sunnis are dissatisfied with the constitution or some political parties are.  Or the Kurds are upset with federalism and they may walk out.  And here we have a panic that the whole process is falling apart.  I'm sorry, brinkmanship is part of politics.  It's part of politics in the United States.  It's part of politics in Iraq.  And more importantly, when you talk to Iraqis and when you talk to Iraqi politicians behind the scenes, whether they're Arab, Sunni, Shiite, Turkmen, Kurd, what have you, they will talk about it usually in strategic terms of how can we get the best deal for ourselves.  Sometimes that's how can we get the best deal for ourselves vis-a-vis the other Iraqis factions.  And other times, it's how can we get the best deal for ourself, vis-a-vis the American embassy or the American forces, which, I mean, sometimes people feel will cave in to pressure.  We shouldn't panic when we have a political process.  If we look at the bigger picture, what Iraq has now with the very peaceful debates over the constitution, very, very passionate debates, very emotional debates, but nonetheless, largely peaceful, you don't hear a car bomb, an insurgent getting off and saying, "I blew up these school children because I wanted this in the constitution."  Instead you heard Abu Musab al- Zarqawi back in January say, "Democracy is the enemy."  What you have in Iraq is a situation where people are having a much broader debate than you could have in Hosni Mubarak's Egypt, than you can have in Syria, than you do have in Iran, where about 98.7 percent of the candidates were disqualified before being allowed to run and so forth.  It remains ironic to this day for me that the first free elections in Syria occurred last January, and no Syrians were allowed to participate.  Only Iraqis residents in Syria could.  Likewise, this idea that somehow there should be a consensus across Iraq, and that if only we delay things that a consensus will bring peace.  I'm sorry, consensus don't bring peace.  If we look at the big picture again, one of the major problems in Iraq is this idea that Iraqis, if you add up all of the constituent factions, and many Iraqis will complain that Americans and journalists and Westerners are more sectarian than the Iraqis are, you do find out that Iraq is the only country that comprises about 226 percent of its own population.  One of the key issues is that when Arab Sunnis honestly believe that they are 50 percent of the population, no concession that can be given is not going to have the downside of impinging negatively on the rights of other groups or other political factions.  And this is something with which we have to deal and for something for which the only long term solution is continuation of a process rather than shifting the parameters of the debate.  I would say that every milestone the Iraqis face, whether it was last January's election or whether it's this coming referendum or if that passes the December 15th elections, of whether it was further back with regard to some of the negotiations over the Group of Seven, over whether city councils could form and so forth, the Iraqis have consistently surprised us at every milestone.  That doesn't reflect positively on the Iraqis.  That reflects more negatively on us, because all too often, it seems in the West--and again, I'm trying to paint the big picture, we heard many of the details today--we consistently underestimate what's going on in Iraq.  And oftentimes, many of the commentators, many of the instant-Iraq experts--and I have nowhere near the experience in Iraq I should--it's impossible.  You have to--it's an onion you have to keep peeling.  The fact of the matter is, every time the Iraqis consistently prove us wrong, we have a tendency, which we should avoid, whether it's in the National Security Council, the State Department, the U.S. embassy, CNN, what have you, any diplomatic corps of the United Nations, to not impose our own political template upon the Iraqis, especially if we have never talked to Iraqis, or listened to Iraqis, which is why I am so glad that we had so many people come from Iraq today to explain some of the issues.  Most Iraqis may not agree with them.  I mean, Iraqis have a whole divergent set of opinions.  But it's important to hear that fresh perspective.  I should add that we were unsuccessful in getting the visas right away for several of the Iraqis who were supposed to join us today.  We hope that they will get their visas in the next couple of days in which case, we hope to have several people fresh out of Baghdad, who will explain some of the issues after the referendum, whatever they may be.  So I would urge you to keep paying attention to the announcements that will go out on the AEI Website and so forth.  If you haven't registered for our e-mails, please do, because I would be very interested to hear people like Abu Hatum (ph), the Robin Hood of the marshes and one of the main resistance leaders in the Shiite area during the time of Saddam Hussein's straight through, about his first impressions of his first trip to the United States, and of the way ahead.  Because all too often, we also don't hear the voices that don't speak English.  Naturally, in the Western media, people tend to go for those who speak English and they hear the same voices repeatedly.  In conclusion, there are many problems ahead.  We've talked about some of the problems that will be faced in the long term--I mean in the short term until the referendum and some of the specific issues.  I would add that corruption is a major problem that is affecting all of Iraq from Kurdistan down to Basra.  I would argue that some of the fighting recently in Basra is likely as much to do about corruption and patronage as it is to do with sectarian issues.  When I was in Iraq recently, I was talking to some scrap metal exporters try to explain to me who they would have to pay permits to and who would honor agreements when they were trying to export scrap metal from Basra out into the Persian Gulf, especially when they already had permission from Baghdad.  There's the issue of external states.  I would argue that every country surrounding Iraq wanted the U.S. to succeed militarily and fail politically.  It's important not to sacrifice the Iraqi will and the Iraqi debate to the feelings of some of the neighboring states.  With all due respect to King Abdullah II of Jordan, it's all well and good.  He's free to say what he wants to say to the Jordanian press.  He can warn about a Shiite crescent all he wants.  But the fact of the matter is, his opinion doesn't matter because in the context of Iraq because he's not Iraqi.  Nor for that matter is Ayatollah Khomeini, nor for that matter is Prime Minister Irdulan (ph), nor for that matter is the King of Saudi Arabia or the Emir of Kuwait.  And therefore, it's important--and one of the issues, which I would argue Iraqis are most sensitive about, and which sometimes causes a great deal of discrepancy between U.S. policy and Iraqi policy, and a great deal of misunderstanding, is when Iraqis are talking from an Iraqi voice and others outside of Iraq are trying to impose a regional voice.  We heard today from Judy Van Rest that recent polls show that 56 percent of Iraqis view themselves as Iraqi first.  I would also add that that changes in context.  When Iraqis are faced with outside issues, that 80 years--I mean more than 50 years of dictatorship and 80 years of common history, has given Iraqis a sense of historical exceptionalism.  One of the major, it seems--one of the major hobbies of Iraqis is sitting in their living room in the evening, if they have their generator on, or if there is electricity, and having the television tuned to Al Jazeera and complaining about whatever the Al Jazeera commentator said because he's not Iraqi and he doesn't understand what's going on in Iraq.  And that's the same whether you're watching it in Basra, whether you're watching it in Baghdad, Mosul, Sulaymaniyah or Irbil.  In conclusion, I do want to thank everyone for coming here today.  I want to extend another set of thanks to Rachael and Molly, Suzanne Gersowitz (ph) and Balal (ph), my former student, who I will claim some credit for, for their excellent work today.  I want to thank every one who made very jet-lagged journeys from Baghdad and elsewhere at risk to themselves, and for the sake of trying to illuminate some of what was going on.  I want to thank our translators today for their excellent job.  And with that, I'd like to end with a round of applause collectively for all of the panelists.  (Applause.)  MR. RUBIN:  Thank you.  (Applause.)  </body></html>