Allies, especially israel, will be provided with the asset that they need so that their defense will be bolstered. You have just visited the area and you tell us what additional assets you can provide. You have just visited the area and you tell us what additional assets you can provide. Carter, i ask you to join in this question. The u. S. Well bolster assets assetso israel and other in the middle east. Comment on the legislation. Thank you. I can tell you the minister of defense is here. We will have dinner with him. They are developing their perspective on what cooperation we might have with them. To include the details of capability development. I had initial discussions with their Prime Minister during my visit. In the conversations that the agreement, i was assured and other colleagues were assured in effect israel would receive all the necessary assistance to make sure its qualitative edge is maintained and enhanced. Policy . The this is an important part of the overall policy toward the middle east. That is what i will be talking to. Along with the chairman, the defense minister, about today. That is one ingredient of the overall support for israel. Add, other golf partners and allies. Ask, since you are mentioning the iran nuclear agreement, the maintenance. I continue to pay personal attention to that. I believe the chairman does as well. Our efforts to counter iranian influence. A lot of dimensions to what we do. All of those activities remain unchanged. The military option. Support for israel, other gulf countries. That is longstanding pursuit of american interests and we are going to keep doing that. I recognize the policy remains unchanged with the military aspects will have to be increased. We will have to do more with israel. That is one of the subjects of my discussion. As it was when i visited a couple of months ago and he hosted me the way i will be hosting him. Can you tell us whether you are satisfied with the progress . We have been have a very good relationship. These are discussions among friends. Israel ands with have a closeness there. That we have with very few other countries around the world. I cannot go into all the details. Defense ery close relationship. I would appreciate you sharing those details in a different form. Im interested in the discussions underway. I want to be satisfied we are fulfilling the commitments made to myself and my colleagues in the course of the discussion before the iran agreement. Thank you very much. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you gentlemen. General betray petreaus was here recently. Whether u. S. Credibility is on the line. Especially when an action contradicts policy statements. Most of the members like many see this as a significant problem that only in the middle east but beyond. Believedunford, do you in action has its own cause . Military wayu. S. The cost of doing nothing when you are presenting options to for options on what we should be doing in the middle east . First of all, i absolutely agree. In action is a next double when we talk about protecting our national interests. With regard to whether we options,ilitary absolutely. It is my responsibility to articulate both the opportunity cost and risk associate with not taking action. Secretary carter, many members of the committee have been concerned about u. S. In of thein another part world. The south china sea. A lot of us on this committee andin action raising costs undermining credibility. There are those who are called m entry of your speech complementary of your speech. Ofust read about the freedom didgation operation that we yesterday. Is that true . Did we do that . Secretary carter we have made a commitment and i appreciate your support. As part of the rebalance to the asiapacific. Are doing more at sea. We are doing more in terms of president s. Answer, we areal acting on the basis of saying we will fly, sale, and operate lawever international operates. Did we send a destroyer within the 12 miles own . Secretary carter they have there have been operations in that region. I dont want to, rate comment on a particular operation. If we do that in a builtup island undersea, submerged rock. Is that consistent with International Law . Should we be doing that on a regular basis. In terms of freedom of navigation. Fly,tary carter we will operate, and sale wherever International Law allows. Region knowbe whether the press reports are accurate. Another area where it seems like in action seems to be inviting more russian aggression. Operations are changing facts on the ground. You talked about the arctic. A major area of importance to the u. S. Strategically and economically, in the future, but you said it is fair to say we are late to the recognition of that. It is also fair to say the russians are not linked to the recognition of that. Since your confirmation, the russians have done the following in the arctic. A new Arctic Military command. 14 new operational airfields in the russian arctic. Announcements of up to 50 new airfields by 2020. A 30 increase of Russian Special forces in the arctic. 40 icebreakers. We have two and one is broken. Huge and claims. Increased patrols. A Major Military exercise in march that cut the military off guard. 3000 militaryover vehicles. 41 ships. 15 submarines. Hundred 10 military aircraft. Airborne troops in that exercise. A lot of this concerns the committee. Which the president vetoed, we had a unanimous agreement to create an Operations Plan for the arctic. Tot is an important step picture we have good operations. I give me your commitment to work with this committee on a robust plan that will enable us aggression inas the arctic and maintain adequate ability in that area of the world, given that that is in the ndaa . Secretary carter you have mine, and i appreciate your leadership. The arctic is an important region for the u. S. And the entire world. We need to do more there. That youate the fact are a champion of that and consider me a supporter. We will have a chance to discuss that in alaska later this week. General why would you not confirm and deny that happened . This is frustrating on this committee when it is out there throughout the media and you will not even tell us. Maybe understand our frustration here. Secretary carter i do understand your frustration. Owntch it with my frustration which is that these are operations we should be conducting normally. Americanccain the people should know about it and we are their representatives. You refuse to confirm or deny something that is all over the media and confirmed by everyone. You come before this committee and say you will not comment on it . Why . Secretary carter well, im going to not be coy. I do not like in general the idea of talking about a military operations. What you read in the newspaper is accurate. Senator mccain. He asked if you can confirm it or not. Secretary carter i can. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I want to get back to syria and to some of the chairman was asking about safe stones. We seem lost. At confusionand about what to do next, unable to put any real marker down or have any plan for success. The people are voting with their feet. They are leaving. There are refugees all over the world now. And we have the opportunity to set up safe zones. We aret i hear is worried about the russians, we are worried about the syrians, we are worried about all these things. At what point do we put a plan together . And tell them, stay out of the way . I distinguish a safe zone from a nofly zone. A safe zone is on the ground. We have analyzed them and discuss them with partners in the region. They are principally not in regions where we would expect them to be contested. They have to be defended against that threat. That is the military undertaking. People in the region, we have not made that recommendation. How many people have to leave before we make that decision . Secretary carter senator, if you create a zone like that, you do have to ask who was going to come into the zone. Are there people who have left syria who are going to return to syria . From turkey or europe . To occupy a zone from which they did not come . Are there other people coming to that zone . You have to ask yourself, for whom would it be attractive . Secondly probably some of the folks in germany who would have rather stayed in their own country. Secretary carter if they wish to return the part of the country for which the zone is created. It would depend on where it was. We have talked about this time after time again. Why are we unwilling to send a message to assad that if he continues with barrel bombing, we will stop him . Secretary carter we have not undertaken to engage as the u. S. Military, the syrian military. We have not taken that step. How can you ever stop the barrel bombing . Secretary carter the way the civil war in syria to end, and to go back to what we have been saying repeatedly, is for assad to depart. As far as i can see, he has had three or four additional allies on board. The calculation is his cards are getting better. Secretary carter our combat has been to combat this priority has been to combat isil. In the process, does the u. S. Standard by as another nation barrel bombs the people we are trying to protect . Secretary carter we have sought for some time and continue to do a political transition in syria that it would end the civil war. We have not pursued a military solution. Im not an expert, we seem lost. I have extraordinary confidence in the leadership and i would love to see alternate plans. General dunford, i was in iraq a few months ago. I was with sunni tribal leaders. I want to ask your best military judgment. Spending time with them, they said, look. If you showed an interest in us . Had a helicopter come by now and then. Showed you really wanted to provide us with guidance, logistics, advice. The partnership, the friendship we have always felt, we will be there and get the job done. Do you think they have that capability . General dunford there are sunnis who can take the fight to the enemy and we have seen that the past area while he continued to hope and pray the iraqi force gets better, are we sitting here with leaders who have individuals that can actually move isis out . General dunford we could absolutely recruit more. The team is ready to go. You just need to get the signal to go. There are people out there, that we can put together to fight isil. Thank you, and thank you secretary carter and general dunford for appearing in front of the committee. The white house has been sending mixed and contradictory messages about what our interest are and what threats to our security exist in the middle east. Many americans are understandably finding our current strategy somewhat reminiscent of the old warren zevon song. This action seems to be to send in lawyers, guns, and money, when a crisis breaks out. The situation in the middle east is a complicated problem, but certainly not historically aberrational. For more than 100 years, this region has been dominated by either external powers or internal authoritarians who have destroyed alterable institutions and disrupted the Natural Development of societies. The decentralization of power in the states combined with radical islam is him amounts to a timetested recipe for the kind of conflict and instability we are seeing today. We continue to receive mixed reports about the effectiveness of ongoing efforts to retain, train, and equipped the Iraqi Security forces. When i ask why we believe it will work this time around, im usually told Something Like the following, well, we have a better political partner in baghdad now than we did before, and we have a partner who will not repeat the mistakes of his predecessor. This is not encouraging. We know how quickly political situations and calculations can change in the middle east. General dunford, im more concerned by what your predecessor, general dempsey, described as the will to fight factor. I believe that extends beyond simply having a better leader in baghdad. Do you believe the kind of united iraq that weve seen for the past century, with borders drawn by the british and french, and held together user by a western backed monarchy or a dictator, is something for which the people of iraq have the general will to fight, especially when they dont have Emergency Assistance from a coalition like they have right now . General dunford senator, i think for most people in iraq, it is more local than it is national. I think if the Central Government would outreach and provide basic services, that we would get sunni fighters that would fight on behalf of the government. Weve seen that in the past. Id like to expand the question more broadly to places like syria or yemen. Do people of those countries have the will to fight for united governments in places where current territorial lines may have been imposed by a Foreign Force . General dunford theres no evidence i know of that would indicate they wouldnt. I think we are looking too hard for a simple answer to some of these complicated questions. I encourage my colleagues and the American People to consider options in the middle east before continuing down paths that i believe may lead to Mission Creep and to indefinite u. S. Military presence to prop up weekend artificially created states designated around unsustainable boundaries. The department of defenses syria train and equip Program Failed by a long shot. Congress put these requirements in place because we were concerned about who would be using u. S. Assistance, and for what purposes. Secretary carter, does the failure of this program indicate to you that the viable ground force we desire for syria simply does not exist within the parameters that the american taxpayer may be willing to support . Secretary carter i was disappointed in it as well, but i dont draw that conclusion. There are forces in syria willing to fight isil and capable of fighting isil. We talked about the syrian kurds as an example of that. In the new train and equip effort that we described today, we will look to identify and support capable and motivated forces on syrian territory that are willing to take on isil. We identified some already. The new approach is to enable them, train them, and equipped them, rather than trying to create such forces anew, which was the previous approach. I understand why that approach was taken. It was authorized by this Committee Last december. I understand the considerations that went into that. I have concluded and the president concluded that that approach wasnt working the way that it was conceived a year ago. That is precisely why weve changed the approach. We have a different approach that we think will allow us to gain more momentum and allow us to put pressure on the selfdeclared capital of the caliphate. On the syrian side, that is our intent. We are trying to gather momentum in that. Thank you. My time has expired. I recognize centered mccaskill. Senator reid, thank you all for being here, and let me give a mention to Master Sergeant joshua wheeler. There probably is no better example of someone who has run into danger for this country over and over again. I wanted to mention his name in the hearing today. We all mourn his loss and the loss of his family and we support them through this trying time. Senator reid asked you about the new syrian forces. Have we provided supplies to those forces . General dunford we have, senator. Have they successfully called in air strikes . General dunford they have. Can you tell us for the record how many . General dunford i cannot. I can get the information for you. On iraq, i have a tendency to believe those ig reports that came out september 30. They raised several concerns. One is asking us to refurbish the conditions under which the iraqis are training. D. I. G. Recommends the Coalition Work with the iraqi administer of the fence on a plan that clarifies the contributions of the United States to improve their living conditions. The ig is saying we are having desertions because they live in such squalor. I just think of the billions and billions on infrastructure we spend in iraq and im trying to get my arms around it. Are we going to go in and fix up something thats going to rot when we leave, or is iraq going to step up to make these conditions palatable . General dunford senator, this is my perspective. I think this is where we are at right now. Our relationship with iraq has to be transactional. There has to be certain conditions we would meet before we would provide support. I will provide recommendations for any support to the iraqi forces that would be based on their behavior and their willingness to be True Partners and meet certain conditions. Capital expenditures grate on many of us who have watched the amount of money we wasted in iraq. Coming from afghanistan, the same ig report points out a real question whether they have the capability of maintaining this going forward. Are there discussions about who is going to their the cost of making these operational . General dunford senator im talking about the ones we are moving over. The u. S. Is providing 250 two the iraqi army. General dunford i cant comment on what the arrangements are but i will get that information for you, senator. Typically, when we provide that of women, it is as is condition. I just want to make sure we not going to the expense of sending something that isnt operational, that we dont want to spend a lot of money to fix up, and they dont have the canola the dont have the capability of maintaining. Secretary carter knows this has been a refrain from the beginning. It makes no sense to give them things if they cant sustain it. That is one of the reasons we are having problems in iraq right now. They were incapable of sustainability. I wont go into details here, but im trying to get at helping the veterans that were subjected to mustard gas experiments. Im having a really difficult time about this. They are saying that even if i have the name of a veteran and the privacy waiver, they will not give me information out of your mustard gas database without a letter from the chairman. I dont understand why this is so hard. Why is everyone not opening these records and doing everything we can to get word to these people . There are a lot of folks out there that were subjected to mustard gas experiments. Im hitting a wall on this. I really need a commitment from you today that you will get me the information as to why me trying to help veterans who may have been exposed to mustard gas, why this should be so hard. Would you be willing to make that commitment to work with my office . Secretary carte