<font color=red>This is who should be canned........ole Rummy. He spins lie after lie.
BTW two more soldiers dead today.......soon more will have died since the war ended than during the entire war.<font color=black>
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Saturday, June 28, 2003
Cons blamed for rising Iraq deaths
By AP
WASHINGTON -- Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld yesterday declined to attribute violence against U.S. soldiers in Iraq to guerrilla warfare, but instead blamed scattered, disorganized remnants of the ousted Iraqi government.
When asked whether the attacks could be considered guerrilla warfare, Rumsfeld told reporters, "I don't know that I would use that word." He noted that thousands of Iraqis had been turned out of prisons, and "they're doing things that are unhelpful to the Iraqi people."
"The coalition is taking every step possible to rout them out," Rumsfeld said after briefing the Senate armed services committee on postwar developments.
U.S. and British forces have suffered 20 deaths from hostile action since President George W. Bush declared major combat over on May 1. Attacks against coalition forces have risen sharply in recent weeks.
Secretary of State Colin Powell said yesterday there is a combination of leftover Baathists, Fedayeen and criminals who loot and steal in Iraq, "taking it out on soldiers." Powell said the casualties are a concern, but he is confident control would be imposed in time.
"We are very concerned ... by the losses that we're sustaining of our men and coalition forces," the committee chairman, Republican Senator John Warner, said in a short news conference with Rumsfeld.
Meanwhile, a U.S. soldier was shot in the head and critically wounded while shopping in a Baghdad store yesterday, the latest target in a surge of attacks that analysts say could explode into open revolt.
The soldier, a specialist assigned to try to win over the civilian population, was shopping for digital video disks in the Kazimiyah neighbourhood in the northwest of Baghdad when he was shot in the back of the head, residents said.
Lt. Gen. John Abizaid, confirmed Friday to replace war commander Gen. Tommy Franks as head of Central Command, told Warner's committee during a confirmation hearing Wednesday that there are three main groups causing the violence: leftover cells from ousted president Saddam Hussein's Baath party in a triangle bounded by Baghdad, Ar Ramadi and Tikrit; anti-American fundamental Islamists, including some foreigners; and a criminal element, including some of the 100,000 prisoners Saddam freed from jail before the war.
"There are criminal elements, and that is a non-trivial number," Rumsfeld adviser Lawrence DiRita said Friday in elaborating on the suspected three groups.
"The prisons were all emptied. These guys are out there. We do not have a very strong ... police force in Baghdad or anywhere else."
DiRita said another group, hardline Islamists with political agendas, aren't necessarily taking military action, but he suggested they might be engaging in sabotage and disinformation campaigns.
"And then you have the Baathists, who may in fact have organized in some sort of fashion that somebody might suggest is a guerrilla fashion," DiRita told reporters at the Pentagon.
Officials said guerrilla warfare usually has some central organization based on an ideology, while the Baathists are just trying to hold on to power. |
