January 10, 2006	Tuesday	Zilhaj 9, 1426

WASHINGTON, Jan 9: The Pentagon acknowledged on Monday that Paul Bremer, the former top civilian administrator in Iraq, warned in May 2004 that more US troops were needed to secure the country, but it said the US military felt otherwise.

Mr Bremer, in a television interview and in a new book — “My Year in Iraq, The Struggle to Build a Future of Hope” — once again has raised questions about the Pentagon’s insistence on a small force even as a fierce resistance took hold in Iraq.

Mr Bremer also defended the decision to disband the Iraqi army in the months after the US invasion in 2003 — a move which some commentators have branded as one of the biggest blunders in Iraq.

The former diplomat said that almost from the start of his year-long tenure as head of Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, he repeatedly raised concerns about the number of US troops on the ground.

Lawrence DiRita, a Pentagon spokesman, called Mr Bremer’s account ‘an interesting historical asterisk or data point as to what happened in May of 2004, but it’s a little bit after the fact’.

He confirmed that Mr Bremer sent the Pentagon a memo in May 2004, about a month before he stepped down, arguing that a significantly larger US force was needed in Iraq. But DiRita said that was the only time Mr Bremer raised those concerns.

“People are free to offer their views and certainly (Bremer) was free to offer his,” said DiRita. “But it was not something he did, in terms of force levels, any other time besides this one time he acknowledged.”

“That assessment was reviewed by the chairman (of the joint chiefs of staff) and other military commanders who came back and advised the secretary that where they were — which at the time, as I said, was 18 brigades — was appropriate,” he said. “And that was the end of the matter.”

Mr Bremer’s stance on troop levels in Iraq was not publicly known at the time, but he caused a stir in October when he told a conference of insurance professionals: “We never had enough troops on the ground.”

In an interview broadcast on Sunday night by NBC television, Mr Bremer said he raised concerns about US force levels right from the start of his tenure.

He said that in May 2003 he sent US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld a study by the Rand Corp, which said 500,000 troops would be needed to secure Iraq. He said he never received a response.

Mr Bremer said he then raised his concerns with President George Bush, who said he would try to raise more troops from other countries.

In his book, Mr Bremer writes that in June 2003, he warned in a teleconference with Mr Bush and other officials that the Pentagon was risking instability by drawing down troops too quickly in Iraq.

He wrote that he said in a follow-up call with then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice: “The coalition’s got about half the number of soldiers we need here, and we run a real risk of having this thing go south on us.”

In Nov 2003, Mr Bremer said he went to Vice President Dick Cheney with his worries about the Pentagon’s push to reduce US force levels in the spring of 2004.

Mr Bremer said he felt the military was exaggerating the strength of the Iraqi security forces being trained to replace them.

“I said to the vice president, ‘You know, I’m not sure that we really have a strategy for winning this war’. The vice president said to me, ‘Well, I have similar concerns,’” Mr Bremer said in the NBC interview.

“He thought there was something to be said for the argument that we didn’t have a strategy for victory at that time,” he said.

Mr Bremer writes that in his May 2004 memo he asked Mr Rumsfeld for more troops, specifically one or two extra divisions for up to a year.—AFP