Rumsfeld now blaming TURKEY. That will make us even more popular in that part of the world.
Rumsfeld Regrets Path of Invasion
By Sonni Efron, Times Staff Writer
WASHINGTON -- Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Sunday he regretted that the United States had not been able to invade Iraq through Turkey, because Iraqi military and intelligence forces in the north of the country melted away to form the insurgency now batting U.S. and Iraqi troops.
Rumsfeld also urged the new Iraqi government to be "darned careful" to avoid staffing the Iraqi security services with patronage appointments that could undermine their effectiveness.
Rumsfeld made the remarks during two television appearances marking the second anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
At least 1,520 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war, according to an Associated Press count.
Asked what he considered to be the greatest mistake of the war, Rumsfeld said, "Had we been successful in getting the 4th Infantry Division to come in through Turkey in the north when our forces were coming up from the south out of Kuwait, I believe that a considerably smaller number of the Baathists and the regime elements would have escaped.
"More would have been captured or killed. And as a result the insurgency would have been at a lesser intensity than it is today," Rumsfeld told ABC's "This Week."
"We've seen attacks on infrastructure. And they've been successful in slowing economic progress and slowing political progress," he said.
In the run-up to the Iraq war, Washington offered political and economic incentives to try to persuade Ankara to allow the U.S. military to use Turkish territory as a base for the invasion. But with public opinion in Turkey running more than 90 percent against the war, the Turkish parliament rejected the prime minister's request and refused to allow passage of American troops or weapons into Iraq. The 4th Infantry Division was re-routed and invaded Iraq from Kuwait.
However, a military analyst said Sunday that the delayed arrival of the 4th Infantry Division was far less a factor in the development of the anti-U.S. insurgency than the Pentagon's failure to plan for postwar security.
"The insurgency came about more because of the chaos that reigned after the fall of Saddam (Hussein) rather than the delayed arrival of the 4th Infantry Division," which arrived in Kuwait in early April and reached Saddam's hometown of Tikrit by mid-April, said Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution.
Moreover, the Pentagon could have delayed the invasion for a week or two until the 4th Infantry Division arrived, or it could have sent the division north to hook down to Baghdad in a "hammer and anvil" move, O'Hanlon said.
"Rumsfeld's never going to admit ... that he was negligent in not formulating a plan for dealing with (postwar) insurgency or lawlessness," O'Hanlon said. "In fairness to Rumsfeld ... it's not in the nature of this job for anybody to admit a mistake that serious while they are in office."
But Thomas Donnelly, a national-security specialist at the American Enterprise Institute, said a northern invasion force "would have made a huge, huge difference" in stabilizing the north in the immediate postwar period.
However, no one in the U.S. government understood how extensive the Sunni resistance would be, or what would be required to put a new Iraqi government in place, Donnelly said. So even if Turkey had permitted a northern invasion, "the effect ultimately would have been transitory," he said.
At the time of the war, the Bush administration was stung by the rejection by Turkey, a member of NATO. But a senior State Department official said Sunday that no lasting damage had been done to U.S.-Turkish relations, which "are strong enough to overcome these kinds of events."
Rumsfeld also said that the number of U.S. troops in Iraq, which was increased to 152,000 troops to provide security for the Iraq election, would fall to 135,000 or 140,000 over the coming weeks.
But he warned that once the transitional Iraqi government was formed, the new ministers of defense and interior, who are charged with fighting the insurgency, should use the "utmost care" in hiring for the security forces, because U.S. and Iraqi lives are at stake.
"They have to be darned careful about making a lot of changes just to be putting in their friend or to be putting in someone else from their tribe or from their ethnic group," Rumsfeld said. "This is too serious a business over there."
============= Incompetent imbeciles: Bush, Rummy, Condasleeza, Powell, Cheney (where IS he hiding or has he gone back to work for Halliburton in secret?), Wolfotwit are running out of people to blame.
Remember this roster of finger pointing targets:
- Baathists
- Foreign fighters/AQ
- Criminals
- Old Europe
- UN
- France (several times)
- Democrats
- Liberals
- Insurgents (AKA, we have no idea who they are but they're shooting at us)
- Saddam Loyalists (we're coming full circle here)
- Turkey
Who in the world are these thugs going to blame next? What are they teaching this generation of kids: lie, cheat, steal, be as greedy as possible, have no morals, have no ethics, take from the poor, squander money, lie some more, be accountable to no one including God, ignore laws, ignore justified criticism, be a selfish putz, be a violent putz. |
