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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (153121)	12/1/2004 1:35:34 PM
From: Win Smith	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Rumsfeld's said a lot of stuff. One particular quote at hand: On April 9 U.S. forces took Baghdad. On April 14 the Pentagon announced that most of the fighting was over. On May 1 President Bush declared that combat operations were at an end. By then looting had gone on in Baghdad for several weeks. "When the United States entered Baghdad on April 9, it entered a city largely undamaged by a carefully executed military campaign," Peter Galbraith, a former U.S. ambassador to Croatia, told a congressional committee in June. "However, in the three weeks following the U.S. takeover, unchecked looting effectively gutted every important public institution in the city—with the notable exception of the oil ministry." On April 11, when asked why U.S. soldiers were not stopping the looting, Donald Rumsfeld said, "Freedom's untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things. They're also free to live their lives and do wonderful things, and that's what's going to happen here." theatlantic.com I think, at some point in that time frame and context, Rumsfeld also say "stuff happens", or something equally profound. Ok, google gives us the gory details at cnn.com . I don't exactly see where Rumsfeld has a whole lot of credibility at this point, but that's just me. As near as I can tell, the US military is stretched to the limit as is ; there's not going to be more troops. Rumsfeld can spin it any way he wants, that always seems to have been a big part of his job.