U.S. Department of Defense Undersecretary for policy Michele Flournoy says that President Obama’s deadline to have U.S. troops withdrawn from Iraq by 2012 is “conditions-based,” and that those conditions depend on issues like the January elections in Iraq. She says as far as elections are concerned, the DOD believes the current lack of an elections law in Iraq is not reason for concern yet. (0:29)

 

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By Julianne LaJeunesse, University of New Mexico-Talk Radio News Service

The Department of Defense Undersecretary for policy Michele Flournoy met with Congressmen for the second time in the past few months Wednesday, addressing some of the changes Iraq will face if U.S. troops are able to successfully follow President Obama’s recently reiterated commitment to withdraw combat troops from Iraq by 2012.

Flournoy said that the January presidential election in Iraq looks promising, but conceded that if the plans don’t go forward, future troop withdrawals aren’t concrete.

“The drawdown plan that we have is conditions-based and it creates multiple decision points for reevaluating and if necessary, changing our plans, based on developments on the ground,” Flournoy said during a hearing with the House Armed Services Committee.

She added that Iraq’s Council of Representatives still has, in the DOD’s opinion, another week or two to agree on an elections law before the January elections will be considered jeopardized. However, if the planned elections do run smoothly in Iraq, the DOD has plans to sell “scrap” military equipment to the Iraqi Security Forces.

Blue Dog Coalition member U.S. Rep. Gene Taylor (D-Miss.) expressed concerns about the plan, saying after Hurricane Katrina, his state had a “desperate need for generators” and warned that “something like Katrina is going to happen again, whether it’s man-made, or the hand of God.”

Taylor challenged the panel of witnesses, asking “to what extent are you taking those things that the military says they don’t need anymore and putting them on line… and to what extent are you making those things available to cities, states, and counties?”

Flournoy and Alan Estevez, Acting Deputy Defense Undersecretary for Logistics and Material Readiness, said the goods sold to the ISF would be screened for U.S. need, to which Estevez responded: “the Department, in coordination with the General Services Administration, which is responsible for the transfer of excess property to state and local entities, has established a process that would allow state and local entities the opportunity to screen excess property in Iraq, prior to it being transferred to the Iraqi government.”

Estevez added that the property is likely unusable by the states because of their foreign volt specifications but Taylor requested access to the list anyway.

The House Armed Services Subcommittee on Air and Land Forces met to discuss the contract award protest filed to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) by Boeing and the future of the KC-135 aerial refueling tanker. Ranking committee member Jim Saxton (R-Nj.) said that he was not going to advocate Boeing or Northrop Grumman, the Los Angeles based corporation that secured the 35 million dollar contract from the Department of Defense (DOD). Boeing filed a protest with the GAO after they lost the contract to Northrup Grumman.

Deputy General Counsel for the GAO, Daniel Gordon testified. He said that Boeing raised a number of challenges to the contract between the DOD and Northrop Grummon. As a result the AGO conducted a five-day hearing, in which 11 witnesses from the DOD testified. At that point, Gordon said, it was understood that the air force made numerous errors that could have affected the outcome between Boeing and Northrop Grumman.

Saxton said that the most important thing is that the aging aerial refueling tankers are replaced. He said that it is imperative to get new tankers out to the “war fighters” as soon as possible.