Iraq effort ‘has not gone well enough’, admits Rumsfeld
WASHINGTON, Nov 9: US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld acknowledged Thursday that US efforts to stabilize Iraq have not gone well and that the military is ill-suited for imposing US will on violent extremists.
In his first speech since President George W. Bush abruptly announced the defense secretary's resignation on Wednesday, Rumsfeld told an audience of university students and soldiers in Kansas that a democratic and peaceful Iraq was “the hope and prayer of everyone involved.””I will say this: It is very clear that the major combat operations were an enormous success. It is clear that in phase two of this, it has not gone well enough or fast enough,” he said.
Rumsfeld pointed to Iraq's constitution, its freely elected government, its functioning schools and hospitals, its stock market and the rise of a free press as evidence of progress.
But he said all that had to be weighed against the sectarian violence and the killings of Muslims by other Muslim extremists, which has created “a much more complex situation.””And quite honestly, our country does not have experience attempting to impose control and our will over vicious, violent extremists that don't have armies, that don't have navies, don't have air forces and operate in the shadows,” he said.
“It is a totally different circumstance,” he said in a question-and-answer session after a speech at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas.
Rumsfeld said the president and his new defense secretary will continue to make adjustments in Iraq, but he cautioned that dealing with Muslim extremism will take patience and perseverance, just as the Cold War struggle against communism did.
“If we have the perseverance and the resolve, we will end up seeing the Iraqi people ultimately take control of their country, govern their country, provide security for their country. And certainly that's our hope and our prayer,” he said.
In the speech, he emphasized the need for all government agencies to pursue joint strategies against extremism, while building the capacity of friendly Muslim countries to confront it within their borders.
Bush picked Robert Gates to succeed Rumsfeld, giving the former CIA chief a mandate to take a fresh look at what is seen by many as a floundering US strategy in Iraq.
Rumsfeld's surprise resignation came the day after a drubbing by Democrats in US mid-term elections that stripped the Republicans of control of Congress, largely because of voter anger over Iraq.
Asked what grade he would give his performance as secretary of defense, Rumsfeld said: “Oh, I'd let history worry about that.”Myers, his onetime partner at Pentagon press conferences, disputed the widely held view that Rumsfeld gave short shrift to the advice of his senior military advisers. He also praised Rumsfeld's loyalty to his commanders.
“He has had many opportunities to deflect the arrows coming his way to the military. Many opportunities. He has never taken one of those opportunities,”Myers said.
“To go back and read about Abu Ghraib, and people wanting to place blame, it would have been easy for the secretary of defense to deflect it to the department to individuals. He never did that.
“He sucked up all those arrows, and continued to lead the department in the way that he knew was right,” Myers said.
Myers was referring to the scandal over prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib prison that came to light in 2004.
EUROPEAN LEADERS: Political leaders in France and Italy said the Iraq war had taken a toll on the US administration after a mid-term electoral rout prompted Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to resign on Wednesday.
“The question of Iraq weighed in even more strongly than domestic policy,”Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi said on the public television channel RAI.“Even if American policy (in Iraq) has started to change, the resignation (of Rumsfeld) will accelerate these changes,” he added.
Italy under former leader Silvio Berlusconi had at first backed the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, but began withdrawing its troops from the country after Prodi was elected prime minister this year.
In neighbouring France, which opposed the US-led invasion from the start, Defence Minister Michele Alliot-Marie said that her US counterpart Rumsfeld had “taken the consequences” of an election in which voters punished the government over Iraq.
“Donald Rumsfeld must have considered that the Iraq war, to which he had so much committed himself, was an element in Americans' response in the election, and he has taken the consequences,” Alliot-Marie told journalists in Paris.
US President George W. Bush said publicly on Wednesday that he took responsibility for his party's “thumping” in Tuesday's mid-term election, which saw a power shift as the opposition Democrats won control of the House of Representatives.
The president also admitted that the Democrats' victories had been fuelled by public anger in the United States over Iraq.—AFP
