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Politics : Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Kerry -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brumar89 who wrote (9049)	3/20/2004 8:17:11 PM
From: geode00	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 81568

Rummy bullied people and overruled career military men on both: - invasion - reasons for invasion - invasion itself The invasion was so fast it left supply lines open to attack. Plus, too few troops on the ground meant that the Oil Ministry could be protected (Ha!) but not the people of Iraq. If Saddam had half the army the lying admin told us he had, it would have been a disaster. Sanctions work, imagine that. The UN didn't want to be associated with the preemptive (ha!) unilateral military occupation of the US. The US needed more boots on the ground to make ALL of Iraq safe. dod.gov MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: As you know, it's already happening. A fair amount of criticism is starting to crop up in the press. A report in this morning's "New Yorker" magazine by Seymour Hersh, highly critical piece. And he says that on six separate occasions you were presented with operational plans from Central Command and you sent them back saying I want to see far fewer forces in these plans. Is that true?... MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: But you know, Seymour Hersh isn't alone then in writing this fiction. There is also an article in the Washington Post this morning by Vernon Loeb and he said -- he goes on to say that there were "More than a dozen officers interviewed, including a senior officer in Iraq, said Rumsfeld took significant risks by leaving key units in the United States and Germany at the start of the war. That resulted in an invasion force that is too small, strung-out, underprotected, under-supplied, and awaiting tens of thousands of reinforcements who will not get there for weeks." Your response?... MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: But you know, you've used 550,000 troops for what was presumably an easier job back in 1991, pushing Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. Can you explain why half that number or a little more than half that number is appropriate now? SEC. RUMSFELD: Well, there are about 300,000 troops there now. And if you go back and look at the 500,000 that you referenced from the Gulf War, they were not used, for the most part. The Iraqi regime is probably 35-40 percent as capable as it was back in 1991. And the people talking about this tend to be people who have the 1991 Gulf War in their mind.