Blame Rummy: Rumsfeld Ignored Pentagon Advice on Iraq

www.washingtonpost.com...


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld repeatedly rejected advice from Pentagon planners that substantially more troops and armor would be needed to fight a war in Iraq, New Yorker Magazine reported.

In an article for its April 7 edition, which goes on sale on Monday, the weekly said Rumsfeld insisted at least six times in the run-up to the conflict that the proposed number of ground troops be sharply reduced and got his way.

"He thought he knew better. He was the decision-maker at every turn," the article quoted an unidentified senior Pentagon planner as saying. "This is the mess Rummy put himself in because he didn't want a heavy footprint on the ground."





How much more do we need to hear about the fools in Washington?

I dont think Rumsfeld was the only one that thought this war would be quicker and simpler. It says at the end of the article that there are 125,000 US and British troops are in Iraq, I thought the number was closer to 250,000. Maybe the other 100,000 are in Kuwait or in the Persian Gulf on ships or whatever, I dont know if they mean technically in Iraq or not.

They mention also that much of the supply of Tomahawk cruise missiles has been expended, aircraft carriers were going to run out of precision guided bombs and there were serious maintenance problems with tanks, armored vehicles and other equipment. Even if that is the case, do they really want to make that public? Wouldn't that be helpful, if not comforting to the enemy?

If the appalling Rumsfeld truly thought it would be "simpler and quicker", then he must be a fool as well as a knave. I imagine he merely had his eye on political, rather than military, strategy.
The numbers include naval crews, support personnel and the like: the ground forces at the front-line are a fraction of the totals.

We recall, of course (it would be rude not to), that "simpler and quicker" appears to have been his thinking when he was lobbying the FDA to approve aspartame.

The long term political fall out from this will be far reaching.

I quick war with so few troops would of sent a powerful message to the world.That the USA could fight 3 or 4 of these such conflicts at the same time.If that message was successful the USA could do as they wished "rogue" state would not have been quick to cross the Superpower.
Now the opposite is true.The USA will have to be more diplomatic and smaller nations need not worry about upsetting the USA.Britain will not join the next war and even the USA must be careful about the circumstances that the next war is engineered.

I agree with you E, he must have had other things on his mind. I just dont see why they would make public the shortages and problems they are having.