Two days before the Hadley memo sharply critical of Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki was sent to cabinet-level officials, one day before the Congressional elections and two days before his resignation, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld penned a memo, the contents of which directly contradicts his often-stated public positions on Iraq policy. The Rumsfeld memo, among other things, recommends the withdrawal of U.S. forces from “vulnerable positions—cities, patrolling, etc.—and move U.S. forces to a Quick Reaction Force (QRF) status, operating from within Iraq and Kuwait, to be available when Iraqi security forces need assistance.” This must put a big smile on Representative Murtha’s face. What puts a big smile on mine is his recommendation to “Position substantial U.S. forces near the Syrian and Iranian borders to reduce infiltration and, importantly, reduce Iranian influence on the Iraqi Government.” This type of repositioning is precisely what I’ve been talking about ever since August.
What isn’t known so far is whether Rumsfeld composed this memo before or after he learned he was on his way out. If he did know, the memo may have been aimed at influencing and improving his treatment by future historians.
Two reactions to the memo are worth noting:
- Michael O’Hanlon, a defense analyst at the Brookings Institution, said the revelation of the memo would undercut any attempt by President Bush to defend anything resembling a “stay the course” policy in Iraq. “When you have the outgoing secretary of defense, the main architect of Bush’s policy, saying it’s failing, that puts a lot more pressure on Bush,” he said.
- “There is an element of throwing in the towel and effectively giving up on at least some areas of the country,†said James Dobbins, a former State Department official and director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at RAND.
...seems to me that the only criticism the way the war in Iraq has been conducted has been from the left, including the press. The Bush administration, in keeping the terrorists pouring into Iraq, has kept them from causing calamity in the US. There was something in what Goebbles said, “..tell a big enough lie often enough, and it becomes the truth..” Our lefties and their abettors, the press, has been on one big campaign of lies and distortions since our troops landed in the Middle East..any one wish to refute…?
Rumsfeld’s Memo on Options for Iraq War…
Two days before his ouster as SECDEF, Don Rumsfeld wrote a memo acknowledging that “what U.S. forces are currently doing in Iraq is not working well enough or fast enough” and offering some “Illustrative New Courses of Action” t…
Mr. Rumsfeld’s memo either represents an attempt to polish a tarnished personal reputation, or is the attempt to force Mr. Bush into over-riding a prior decision to avoid accepting Mr. Rumsfeld’s changed priorities in Iraq. Either way, Mr. Bush’s remarks in Amman this week relegate the memo to wistful ‘coulda, woulda, shouda.’
For ‘Musnkatz’ – Actually, to some of its readers, the ‘American Future’ blog has been quite critical of the way the war in Iraq has been conducted for the past year and a half, but in the positive sense of criticism, as in ‘contructive criticism,’ a concerned solution-offering critique, not a nihilistic whine.
‘Be free.’
seems to me that the only criticism the way the war in Iraq has been conducted has been from the left, including the press. The Bush administration, in keeping the terrorists pouring into Iraq, has kept them from causing calamity in the US. There was something in what Goebbles said, “..tell a big enough lie often enough, and it becomes the truth..†Our lefties and their abettors, the press, has been on one big campaign of lies and distortions since our troops landed in the Middle East..any one wish to refute…?
I see you are adopting your Goebbles theory and employing it quite well, as this is one of the biggest fallacies regarding the current war (i.e. fighting them overthere so we don’t have to fight them in our country). We can fight them all you want in Iraq, and it won’t affect the plans al Qaeda has against us elsewhere, that is the nature of the movement. In fact, most reports indicate that al Qaeda (particularly foreign jihadists) make up less than 10 percent of the Iraqi insurgency. Most of the new al Qaeda in Iraq fighters are, well, Iraqis, meaning that their objectives are local and based solely on fighting what they perceive as both Iranian influence and American occupation. These fighters in Iraq for the most part have limited aims, unlike al Qaeda, so the argument that we fight them there so we don’t have to fight them here, does not apply. In addition, as we have seen over and over again in Madrid, London, Casablanca and elsewhere, the al Qaeda is still very much up and running and capable of conducting attacks against Western targets. That they have failed to conduct a succesful attack on American soil is due to various other factors that have nothing to do with Iraq. Better and more focused efforts by the US and its allies at tracking and stopping said attacks, and the difficulty al Qaeda has of getting fighters trained and prepared from Pakistan to come to the US. The administration, to its credit has done many things right with regard to the GWOT, but with regard to Iraq it has failed miserably, because it continues to push the notion that al Qaeda is ultimately responsible when that it not the case as the battle there is now more about Sunni-Shiite power relations than anything else. Al Qaeda in Iraq furthers those tensions, but it is not by any means the main driver. Iraq has become more about preventing/abetting the rise of Iran to its natural position as the region’s hegemon, than about al Qaeda and the overall war on terror.