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What progress has been made in Iraq? The progress question or some variant of it was asked repeatedly at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on "Iraq After the Surge: What Next?" Chairman Joseph Biden (D-DE) said in his opening statement violence in Iraq has gone down, but not as far as anticipated. These are fragile gains, he said, and the notion of staying in the country is not the goal. The continued loss of life, drains on our treasury, the impact of readiness on our armed services, and the ability to send soldiers to where al-Qaida has grouped, is like "treading water" and we can't keep treading water without exhausting ourselves.

Ryan Crocker, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, relayed that it is hard to see progress in Iraq, and there is much to be done. However, he said, the surge is working. We have begun to develop a long-term relationship with the United States and Iraq, and the heart of the framework is a United States presence in Iraq. Our forces will remain in Iraq past December 31, which is when the current UN agreement expires. The new agreement will not make permanent bases in Iraq or raise up troop levels. Almost everything about Iraq is hard, Crocker said, but hard does not mean hopeless. Our gains are fragile and reversible. In regards to Iraq, Americans and the world will judge us not on what we have done, but what will happen in the future.

We have been transferring power to Iraqis, said Gen. David Petraeus, commander of the Multi-National Force in Iraq. Half of the provinces in Iraq are under their control, and Iraq's security forces expenditures have exceeded ours. While the forces in Iraq itself have improved, Petraeus said, their forces are not ready to defend themselves on their own. They are shouldering a lot of the load, but they are not yet ready for a resurgence of al-Qaida in Iraq, better known as AQI. There is an operational consideration, he said, transference of power requires a lot of time and monitoring. We've asked a great deal of our men and women in uniform, he said, and we are grateful and appreciate their sacrifices. All Americans should take great pride in them.

But what would happen if we removed our troops? Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN) asked that question, and Petraeus responded that we have put our teeth into their jugular, and we need to keep it there. In response to an additional question from Senator Biden, Petraeus said we are at a "six or seven" level on a scale from one to ten towards readiness to return to our pre-surge troop level. Biden also asked Ambassador Crocker, "In a choice, the Lord Almighty came down and sat in the middle of the table there and said, 'Mr. Ambassador, you can eliminate every al-Qaida source in Afghanistan and Pakistan or every al-Qaida personnel in Iraq,' which would you pick?" The Ambassador said he would choose al-Qaida in the Afghanistan Pakistan border area.

Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) said AQI was not in Iraq before we got there, and that AQI is really the focus here. If we are successful in Iraq, he asked, do we anticipate that AQI will not reconstitute itself? At what point do we say that they will not be particularly effective? In terms of our success in Iraq, it's just as fair to say that we can't get rid of AQI but just create a manageable situation. What is a legitimate affair between Iran and Iraq that would make us comfortable enough to pull out our troops? We all have the greatest interests in seeing a successful resolution in Iraq, he said. I continue to believe that going in was a blunder. I think that the surge has reduced violence and given us breathing room, he said, but not enough breathing room. I think increased pressure in a measured way, includes a withdrawal of troops.