WASHINGTON Ñ The United States will be responsible for protecting the security of Iraq if it succeeds in toppling the Saddam Hussein regime, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was told in testimony Thursday.
A U.S. force of up to 75,000 soldiers would be needed to protect a defeated Iraq from Iranian attack according to Col. Scott Feil, former chief of the strategy division for the Joints
Chiefs of Staff.
Feil, currently a director of a program for post-conflict
resolution at the Association of the United States Army, said the U.S. force
must include combat aircraft and remain in Iraq for at least a year at an
estimated cost of $16 billion.
Iran could take advantage of a defeated Iraq by trying to settle
scores from the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, according to a report by Middle East Newsline.
Feil said the U.S. force must protect key strategic Iraqi areas, such as
the disputed Shatt Al Arab waterway and Iraqi oil fields. He said the U.S.
military presence must also ensure the disarmament of the Iraqi army and the
destruction of nonconventional weapons facilities.
"The requirements are providing the core security for the largest
cities Ñ about 10 million in population in the largest eight, which is
about 40 percent of the total population Ñ and the humanitarian effort;
securing the WMD [weapons of mass destruction] and their associated
facilities; patrolling the Iranian border areas and the Kurdish areas;
protecting the Shatt Al Arab and the oil fields, monitoring the region the
region of the Tigris and the
Euphrates, and the Syrian border, which the Tigris and Euphrates contain the
bulk of the population," Feil said.
Feil said such a force must focus on intelligence-gathering, mobility
and maneuverability. He said the United States must deploy 75,000 soldiers
apart from the contributions of its allies. The U.S. force would comprise
two U.S. divisions, one of which would be the 101st Airborne Division.
"The second division is situation-dependent as to whether the neighbors,
their behavior, especially Iran, is evaluated," Feil said. "If the
evaluation of their behavior and their attitude towards what we are doing is
relatively complacent, then I think a light division with more infantry to
use within Iraq is probably appropriate. If, on the other hand, the Iranians
are threatening or there is a problem with the brigade that is located in
the Iraqi diaspora that is
coming back into the country, then perhaps an armored division or a
mechanized division would be more appropriate to help secure Iraq's eastern
border."
Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Joseph Biden said Feil's
testimony was in line with that of other experts and officials. Biden raised
the prospect that the size of a U.S. military presence could spark unrest in
neighboring countries such as Iran and Syria.
"We are going to have people on the Iranian border, down on the oil
fields, up on the Tigris and Euphrates," Biden said. "We are going to be all
over the place. That's a pretty big footprint Ñ even if it's only for a
year. What happens in Syria? What happens in Iran?"
