“A” Material
by J. David Chadwick - Tuesday, October 7, 2003
I had the opportunity today to sit in on an outdoor question and answer session with Donald Rumsfeld on Fort Carson in Colorado Springs. Everybody was asking him stupid questions about daycare and phone cards, and I thought "I am going to ask my question if I have to stand up and stop this ceremony!" Thankfully it did not come to that and I was called on.
The following is a transcript of our transaction.
JDC -- Mr. Secretary, I'm [J. David Chadwick]. My question is, considering that we still have troops in every area that we have conducted operations during the Clinton administration, why is this operation in Iraq viewed negatively in the press as a Vietnam- style quagmire?
Secretary Rumsfeld: Give that man an "A".
I'll tell you, it's beyond me. I just had a hearing before the House of Representatives Appropriations Committee on an emergency supplemental budget. And that very day, 17 members of the United States Congress, Republicans and Democrats alike, had just arrived back from Iraq. And six of them were on that committee. And they went right down the line, every single one of them, saying that what they see and read about Iraq in the United States and in the region does not compare with what they personally saw and experienced with their own eyes. These people went right down -- they were stunned by the difference between what they experienced in that country and what they saw and what they were being told in the press.
Now, it should not surprise you that the next day there was not a single word in the press about that hearing. Not one of those first eyewitness comments by seven members -- six or seven members of the United States House of Representatives of both parties -- not a single word of what they said about what was taking place in Iraq appeared, to my knowledge, in -- at least in the Washington press.
Why is that? I guess I don't know quite why it is. I do remember that when we went to Afghanistan with our forces, we'd been operating there, oh, I don't know, a week, 10 days, 15 days, and it was characterized on the front page of newspapers as a quagmire, that we were bogged down. And of course, it was only a matter of days thereafter that Mazar-e Sharif fell and Kandahar and Kabul fell. And it wasn't a quagmire. In Iraq, you'll remember, there was a pause as the forces were moving up from Kuwait into the southern portion of the country, towards Baghdad, and south of Baghdad there were some two or three days of bad dust storms, and once again the phrase "quagmire" came up.
I guess it's because bad news is news. It's something that everyone feels they have to put in the newspaper, put on television, and it gets drumbeat. And with 24-hour news in our country, it isn't like it's one problem, it's like that it's 24 problems, one every hour, even though it's the same one.
And I must say, however, that my sense is that the American people have a very good center of gravity and they're well-moored or well-rooted, and that, notwithstanding your very valid point, that they have a sense and an understanding that things don't happen in five minutes in life.
We've been in there for five months since the end of major combat operations. It was May 1st. That's May, June, July, August, September and seven days, five months and seven days. And what have they done? Those folks, men and women in uniform, civilians, our coalition partners, they have proceeded to do thousands of projects. Every school in the country is ready to open. All the hospitals and clinics are operating. They have a new central bank. They have a new currency. Out across that country, the electrical power hit the magic number of pre-war, I believe yesterday or the day before. The oil wells are operating. There was not a humanitarian crisis. There were not tens of thousands of internally displaced people. There were not refugees pouring across the border into other countries.
The folks that went in there had a plan. They did a terrific job, and by golly, they deserve a lot of credit. And the idea of calling it a quagmire is flat wrong.
I'm told there's time for two more questions, but I'm inclined to quit on that one. Thank you very much. Good to see you all!
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