it's yipy yuky (the American version of):
Rumsfeld admits underestimating Iraq task
December 3, 2004 - 2:36PM
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US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld acknowledged today that the United States failed to predict the strength of the insurgency in Iraq, but he defended the size of the US force deployed to stabilise the country.
Asked in an interview with Fox News television the major mistakes of the war, Rumsfeld cited the failure to find weapons of mass destruction and "the fact of, was it possible to better estimate the insurgency?"
"If you're asking, 'Was there any kind of understanding or agreement that there would likely be a long insurgency afterwards?', I don't believe ... if you dropped a thumbline through all that intelligence, that anyone would say that," he said.
Rumsfeld, however, denied more troops should have been sent to Iraq.
"In Iraq, we had the number of troops that the battlefield commanders asked for," he said. "And one has to believe that they know something about the subject, more than maybe some armchair people speculating from the side."
Rumsfeld spoke a day after the Pentagon announced it was temporarily raising force levels in Iraq to 150,000 troops, their highest level since the US invaded Iraq in March 2003. The increase is to bolster security during the January 30 elections, Pentagon officials said.
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Critics from both parties in Congress have charged that the size of the force sent to Iraq was too small to win the peace in Iraq.
Asked whether the insurgents can be beaten, Rumsfeld said, "It's a test of wills. I mean, they haven't won a single battle the entire time since the end of major combat operations."
He said Iraq was "somewhat different" from Vietnam where the US military also won most battles but lost the war.
"But this is a test of wills, and that was, too, to be sure," he said. "We have a president who was determined to not yield to the extremists who are out chopping off people's heads. Imagine if that country were turned over to those people."
Rumsfeld was asked whether US forces could stabilise the country within two years.
"I think so," he said. "Well, I shouldn't say that. The United States won't do it, the Iraqi people will."
Asked if he thought the Iraqi security forces would fight the insurgents, Rumsfeld said more Iraqi security forces have been killed so far than US troops.
"So, the Iraqi security forces are out there fighting. They're not sitting in their barracks hiding," he said.
- AFP
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- well, yes, it coulda been crass ass but...
well, yes, it coulda been crass ass but...
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