Shays traveled to Iraq during the April congressional recess and toured the city of Umm Qasr with the Connecticut-based humanitarian organization Save the Children. Experts from humanitarian organizations say that while there is not a humanitarian crisis in the classic sense, there is a security crisis that impedes humanitarian efforts and could result in a severe humanitarian crisis if not corrected.

But Garner appeared optimistic about Iraq’s future in his lengthy taped statement to the committee. While he said that the devastation of Iraq was “the most horrible thing you’ve ever seen,” he promised that U.S. forces were going to turn that around, citing efforts to restore power and limited communications infrastructure within the next month, and to begin paying the salaries of Iraqi civil servants.

Earlier this week the White House dispatched a civilian administrator, L. Paul Bremer, to take over the leadership of the reconstruction effort from Garner, who will report to Bremer.

At Tuesday’s hearing, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, criticized Garner for appearing only in a taped statement, which allowed no opportunity for questioning from the committee. No representative of the Defense Department appeared in person at the hearing.

There was widespread agreement among those testifying, including State Department and humanitarian officials, that the chief obstacle to the reconstruction effort in Iraq is widespread looting, crime and lawlessness. Infrastructure, food and medical supplies have been stolen by looters; violence and robbery have left ordinary Iraqis afraid to leave their homes and aid workers unable to work safely, according to numerous sources.

According to Lurma Rackley, a spokeswoman for the international nonprofit aid organization CARE, the extreme lawlessness could lead to a more severe kind of crisis, for example if water-borne illnesses like cholera increase and aid workers are unable to help because of the violence.

After armed gunmen recently stole two of CARE’s cars, the group considered evacuating some of its personnel to a safer location, Rackley said in a phone interview Tuesday.

Shays said that the help of groups such as CARE is important to the reconstruction of Iraq, “but they cannot yet operate fully or freely in an unsettled security environment that threatens the physical safety and political neutrality of humanitarian workers.”

He also said the shift from combat to police operations “has not been as rapid or smooth as planned.”

State Department representative Richard Greene told the committee that failures in planning had contributed to the security problem. The U.S. government, he said, had done extensive planning around the classic humanitarian crisis scenario involving large displaced populations – something that never happened in Iraq – and made a “grand underestimation” of the amount of looting that would follow the fall of the Baath party government.

“There is very little war damage in the country,” Garner said. “Most of the damage is from looting.”

Rackley said the United States, as an occupying power, has a responsibility under international law to restore order, “whatever it takes.”

Shays trip to the Middle East was prompted by an invitation from the Islamic Institute to speak at a conference on democracy and free markets in Kuwait. From there, he traveled to Israel, Jordan and Iraq.

Shays’ chief of staff, Betsy Hawkings, said that the congressman made a public commitment to travel to the middle east early this year, when constituents at a town hall meeting pointed out to him that he had not seen the results of the Israel-Palestine conflict firsthand.