I am very aware, as I think many Americans are at this point, of the serious problems that we have in the area of acquisition and contracting in Iraq.

Is there a plan for what happens if this doesn't work, if the Iraqi brigades don't show up, if the police personnel don't stand up, if this is not successful--is there a plan, going forward?

I think you are going to see this around the country, unfortunately, General.

Senator McCaskill. Thank you all for your service. I appreciate it very much.

DOD has been on the high-risk list for GAO since 1990.

It's clear that the military is taking this very seriously.

I think it's close to 20,000 people, from best I can tell. That's a lot of people--20,000 people.

I have looked into how many Antideficiency Act (ADA) violations have actually been punished in DOD.

There's this sense that, the commanders have their military mission, which I'm very respectful of.

It's really hard to figure out who to blame when something goes terribly wrong and taxpayer money is wasted at unprecedented levels.

At what point in time does it get to your level, and you say, 'Wait a minute, something is not right here'?

I think there's a whole lot of circle-the-wagons that go on.

We're cutting off our nose to spite our face.

I just, until someone at the highest levels of the military embraces the idea that we are now fighting this war with private contractors, in terms of logistic support.

I'm a little concerned that I would know more about it than you would, honestly, since we have more contractors on the ground than we have military.

I would certainly appreciate your take on how we begin to engrain in our military training for commanders, the responsibility of contractor oversight.

It worries me that this is not further up, and I have a man from Missouri who was kidnapped as part of a convoy attack last November.

Until we hold those commanders responsible, I have a feeling we're going to be, it's going to be all foam and no beer in terms of what we're really accomplishing.