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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Karen Lawrence who wrote (30390)	10/22/2003 9:52:03 AM
From: Karen Lawrence	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 89467

I thought Rumsfeld had been replaced by Rice. Nevertheless, we are losing the war on terror just as we have lost the Nancy Reagan war on drugs: Rumsfeld memo questions whether U.S. is doing enough in terror fight MATT KELLEY, Associated Press Writer Wednesday, October 22, 2003 www.sfgate.com (10-22) 06:32 PDT WASHINGTON (AP) -- Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld questioned whether the United States was doing enough to win the war on terrorism, citing "mixed results" in the fight against al-Qaida in a pointed memo to top Pentagon officials last week. Rumsfeld said the U.S.-led coalitions would win in Afghanistan and Iraq, but not without "a long, hard slog." He wrote that the United States "has made reasonable progress in capturing or killing the top 55 Iraqis" but has made "somewhat slower progress" tracking down top Taliban leaders who sheltered al-Qaida in Afghanistan. The memo, dated Oct. 16 and first reported by USA Today on Wednesday, offered a much more stark assessment of the global war on terrorism than contained in Rumsfeld's public statements. "It is pretty clear that the coalition can win in Afghanistan and Iraq in one way or another, but it will be a long, hard slog," he wrote. White House press secretary Scott McClellan, traveling with President Bush in Australia, declined to comment on the memo. Bush, however, talked about the war on terrorism with reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Canberra, where he planned to discuss this with Prime Minister John Howard. "I've always felt that there's a tendency of people to kind of seek a comfort zone and hope that the war on terror is over," Bush said. "And I view it as a responsibility of the United States to remind people of our mutual obligations to deal with the terrorists." On the battle against the terror network blamed for the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, Rumsfeld wrote: "We are having mixed results with al-Qaida, although we have put considerable pressure on them -- nonetheless, a great many remain at large." They include the group's top leader, Osama bin Laden, and his right-hand man, Ayman al-Zawahiri. Rumsfeld wrote "we are just getting started" in battling Ansar al-Islam, an Iraq-based terrorist group linked to al-Qaida. Pentagon officials said the memo was another in a series of provocative questions that the secretary regularly raises with Pentagon brass. "Today, we lack metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror," Rumsfeld wrote. "Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?" Madrassas are Islamic religious schools. Rumsfeld and other U.S. officials say some schools run by radical groups indoctrinate students to join in an anti-American holy war. Rumsfeld's memo raises the possibility of creating "a private foundation to entice radical madrassas to a more moderate course" and questions how to block the funding of the extremist schools. Sounding a theme Rumsfeld has voiced repeatedly in the past two years, the memo says the Defense Department is too big and slow to effectively fight small groups of terrorists. "It is not possible to change DoD fast enough to successfully fight the global war on terror," Rumsfeld wrote. "An alternative might be to try to fashion a new institution, either within DoD or elsewhere -- one that seamlessly focuses the capabilities of several departments and agencies on this key problem." Rumsfeld also suggested the United States may need to do more to "stop the next generation of terrorists." "The U.S. is putting relatively little effort into a long-range plan, but we are putting a great deal of effort into trying to stop terrorists," Rumsfeld wrote. "The cost-benefit ratio is against us! Our cost is billions against the terrorists' costs of millions."