Yeah, but those deaths were necessary, according to Rumsfeld.
``It's clearly a tragic day for America ... In a long, hard war, we're going to have tragic days,'' Rumsfeld said. ``But they're necessary. They're part of a war that's difficult and complicated.''
fairandbalanced.us
From that same article:
Rumsfeld said there were ``enormous numbers'' of such missiles still in Iraq. ``Have to be more than hundreds,'' he said. ``There are weapon caches all over that country. They were using schools, hospitals, mosques to hide weapons.''
While it does appear to be true that there are enormous numbers of weapons in Iraq, and that the weapons caches are all over the country, Rumsfeld has to spin it by saying that the Iraqis are using schools, hospitals and mosques to hide weapons. While I would not doubt that this has been done, it masks the real problem of the weapons caches that just sit there with not enough US personnel to even guard them.
Huge weapons dumps and warehouses of weapons. all the insurgents need to do is drive up and load ordinance, any time they want it. Easy as getting an Egg McMuffin at the drive up window! They don't need to hide it. But Rummy's spin tries to enrage by saying they hide it in schools and mosques.
Explosives are not hard to come by; hundreds of Iraqi arms caches have been left unguarded. A month ago an Iraqi citizen approached some U.S. soldiers, offering to sell a shoulder-held SA-7 surface-to-air missile, the kind that can be use to shoot down commercial airliners. When the soldiers offered the man $250, he drove back with a truckload of missiles and collected a payment of $40,000. He told the GIs that he would have brought more but he couldn’t fit them all into his truck.
msnbc.com
I think we do need more troops in Iraq, if nothing else to secure the weapons that are everywhere. It's the weapons that sit unguarded in Iraq which as responsible for the on going killing in Iraq.
Rumsfeld "Army Lite" doesn't work. We don't have enough people there to do the required security work and weapons cache work. This in turn breeds mistrust and angst at the US forces, because lots of Iraqis are being killed too.
The Bush administration's policies are not working. But the problem is that they will probably not react to these problems with the appropriate actions. They have to try and save face, while putting the soldier's asses on the line everyday. And to top it off we'll be going it alone, cause Bush in his unilateral screw the rest of the world "Bring em on" diplomacy has turned the rest of the world away from helping.
I agree fully with McCain and Hillary, that we have an insufficient force in Iraq to get the job done, while minimizing the casualties.
Orca |
