8:30 a.m.	Registration and Breakfast
9:00	Introduction:	Danielle Pletka, AEI
9:15	Panel 1: The Definition of Federalism & the Structure of Government
	Opening remarks: Speakers:	Kanan Makiya, Iraq Memory Foundation
		Munthir Al Fadhal, Constitutional Commission
	Moderator:	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
11:00	Panel 2: National Defense, Security, and the Role of Militias
	Speakers:	Frederick W. Kagan, AEI Colonel Frederick R. Kienle, National Defense University
		Entifadh Qanbar, Deputy Military Attache
12:30 p.m.	Moderator:                               Frederick Kagan, AEI Lunch
1:30	Panel 3: The Role of Religion
	Speakers:	Sheikh Afeef Uddin Al-Gaylani, Darul Qadriyah International
		Zainab Al-Suwaij, American Islamic Congress
	Moderator:	Sama Hadad, Iraqi Prospect Organization Ghanim Jawad, Al-Khoei Foundation Reuel Marc Gerecht, AEI
3:30   4:30	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
	Speakers:	Salem Chalabi, attorney
		Mishkat Moumin, former Iraqi minister for environment
		Ammar Al Shahbander, Institute for War and Peace Reporting
5:45	Moderator: Closing Remarks:	Michael Rubin, AEI Michael Rubin, AEI
6:00	Adjournment

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