U.S. commander decries Iraq timetable

[GaryC 7]

WASHINGTON - The top U.S. commander in the Middle East warned Congress Wednesday against setting a timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq, rejecting the arguments of resurgent Democrats who are pressing President Bush to start pulling out.

Gen. John Abizaid instead urged quick action to strengthen Iraq's government, predicting that the vicious sectarian violence in Baghdad would surge out of control within four to six months unless immediate steps were taken.

"Our troop posture needs to stay where it is," and the use of military adviser teams embedded with Iraqi army and police forces needs to be expanded, Abizaid told the Senate Armed Services Committee. It was the first hearing on Iraq policy since last week's elections gave Democrats control of both houses of Congress starting in January.

The voting last week has been widely interpreted as a public repudiation of Bush's policies on the war, which has left more than 2,850 U.S. troops dead and more than 20,000 others wounded.

Democrats have coalesced around the idea of starting to remove American troops in the next few months, and increasing numbers of Republicans have been openly critical of the war. The day after the election, Bush expressed an openness to considering fresh ideas on Iraq and announced the departure of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

"Hope is not a strategy," Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., a prospective 2008 presidential candidate, said at Wednesday's hearing. Citing the Bush administration's repeated claims of progress, Clinton said she saw no evidence that the Iraqi government was ready to make hard decisions, including taking firm action to disarm or neutralize sectarian militias.

"The brutal fact is, it is not happening," she said.

Even so, Abizaid said it was too soon to give up on the Iraqis or to announce a timetable for starting a U.S. troop withdrawal.

Sen. John Warner (news, bio, voting record), R-Va., chairman of the panel, said after the hearing that he planned to work with Democrats to produce by January a bipartisan recommendation to the president on a way ahead in Iraq.

Asked what the effect would be on sectarian violence if the U.S. began a troop withdrawal in four to six months, as proposed by some Democrats, Abizaid replied, "I believe it would increase." It also would undermine U.S. efforts to increase Iraqis' confidence that their own government is capable of assuring their security, he suggested.

Pressed by Sen. Jack Reed (news, bio, voting record), D-R.I., on how much time the U.S. and Iraqi governments have to reduce the violence in Baghdad before it spirals beyond control, Abizaid said, "Four to six months."

At the same time, Carl Levin, the Democratic next chairman of the committee, said the administration must tell Iraq that U.S. troops will begin leaving in the next half year.

"We cannot save the Iraqis from themselves. The only way for Iraqi leaders to squarely face that reality is for President Bush to tell them that the United States will begin a phased redeployment of our forces within four to six months," said Levin, of Michigan.

While the hearing put a spotlight on Democrats' view that the administration's Iraq policy is broken, it produced no new proposals for fixing it.

In one of the more contentious exchanges, Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record), R-Ariz., also a possible presidential candidate in 2008, challenged Abizaid's analysis of the Iraqi situation and accused him of sticking to a failed course.

"I'm of course disappointed that basically you're advocating the status quo here today, which I think the American people in the last election said that is not an acceptable condition," McCain said.

In response, Abizaid said he was not arguing for the status quo. He said the key change that is needed now is to place more U.S. troops inside the Iraqi army and police units to train and advise them. Having visited Iraq as recently as this week, Abizaid said he remained optimistic that the Iraqis are capable of overcoming sharp internal differences and creating conditions for stability.

Abizaid later testified to the House Armed Services Committee, where Democrats delivered angry rebukes of the war and took a more partisan tack.

"It's hard to find reason for optimism in Iraq today," said Rep. Ike Skelton (news, bio, voting record), D-Mo., who will take over the panel next year.

In a meeting with reporters, Sen. Harry Reid (news, bio, voting record), D-Nev., who will be Senate majority leader in the next Congress, said Bush needs to improve Iraqi reconstruction efforts, re-equip U.S. military units whose gear has been damaged in the war and reduce the role of American troops.

"We have to change the mission of the troops in Iraq to counterinsurgency, force protection, and have to do a much better job and have more trainers there," Reid said.

In a separate session on Capitol Hill, two of the government's top intelligence officials offered relatively grim assessments of Iraq.

"The perception of unchecked violence is creating an atmosphere of fear and hardening sectarianism which is empowering militias and vigilante groups, hastening middle-class exodus and shaking confidence in government and security forces," Lt. Gen. Michael Maples, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said in prepared testimony.

Gen. Michael Hayden, director of the CIA, told a panel that some blame for Iraq's trouble lies with neighboring Iran.

"The Iranian hand is stoking violence and supporting even competing Shiite factions" in Iraq, Hayden said.

Asked about his testimony in August that Iraq could fall into civil war and that the sectarian violence was as bad as he had ever seen it, Abizaid said the situation has improved though it is still troubling.

"It's certainly not as bad as the situation appeared back in August," Abizaid said, adding that he saw growing confidence among Iraqis in their government. "It's still at unacceptably high levels," he said of the sect-on-sect violence

Alluding to Washington's partisan battles over Iraq, Abizaid said that when he visits the U.S. capital he senses a "despair" that does not exist in Iraq when he visits with Iraqi officials or with American troops and their commanders.

Abizaid said that adding large numbers of U.S. troops in Iraq was not an option over the long run.

"We can put in 20,000 more Americans tomorrow and achieve a temporary effect," Abizaid said, apparently referring to McCain's call for more troops. "But when you look at the overall American force pool that's available out there, the ability to sustain that commitment is simply not something that we have right now with the size of the Army and the Marine Corps."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061115/ap_on_...o/congress_iraq

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

I saw that story. It seems every suggestion is bad - don't increase troops, don't take troops away, don't partition the country.

If someone doesn't come up with some real workable ideas, we will end up cutting and running. Of course Bush won't stand up and take responsibility - he's too much of a coward.

[GaryC 7]

I saw that story. It seems every suggestion is bad - don't increase troops, don't take troops away, don't partition the country.

If someone doesn't come up with some real workable ideas, we will end up cutting and running. Of course Bush won't stand up and take responsibility - he's too much of a coward.

If we end up cutting and running it won't be the fault of Bush. He has clearly stated that he wants to stay until the job is done. You can call Bush a lot of things but coward he isn't. The cut and run dems are the cowards.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

I saw that story. It seems every suggestion is bad - don't increase troops, don't take troops away, don't partition the country.

If someone doesn't come up with some real workable ideas, we will end up cutting and running. Of course Bush won't stand up and take responsibility - he's too much of a coward.

If we end up cutting and running it won't be the fault of Bush. He has clearly stated that he wants to stay until the job is done. You can call Bush a lot of things but coward he isn't. The cut and run dems are the cowards.

I guess courage involves sitting and doing nothing, while the bodycount creeps ever upwards - while spewing out increasingly stale slogans.

If he was truly courageous he would put more troops back in. But that's just my take. Any guesses why he hasn't done this in all the time he's had up until the election? Because he would have been politically damaged by admitting a tactical error. Nice to know that people can be put in harms way to protect his career and reputation.

[GaryC 7]

I saw that story. It seems every suggestion is bad - don't increase troops, don't take troops away, don't partition the country.

If someone doesn't come up with some real workable ideas, we will end up cutting and running. Of course Bush won't stand up and take responsibility - he's too much of a coward.

If we end up cutting and running it won't be the fault of Bush. He has clearly stated that he wants to stay until the job is done. You can call Bush a lot of things but coward he isn't. The cut and run dems are the cowards.

I guess courage involves sitting and doing nothing, while the bodycount creeps ever upwards - while spewing out increasingly stale slogans.

If he was truly courageous he would put more troops back in. But that's just my take. Any guesses why he hasn't done this in all the time he's had up until the election? Because he would have been politically damaged by admitting a tactical error. Nice to know that people can be put in harms way to protect his career and reputation.

The troop levels are set by the Generals on the ground. If they want more they get more. Your just politicizing it for your own ammusment.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

I saw that story. It seems every suggestion is bad - don't increase troops, don't take troops away, don't partition the country.

If someone doesn't come up with some real workable ideas, we will end up cutting and running. Of course Bush won't stand up and take responsibility - he's too much of a coward.

If we end up cutting and running it won't be the fault of Bush. He has clearly stated that he wants to stay until the job is done. You can call Bush a lot of things but coward he isn't. The cut and run dems are the cowards.

I guess courage involves sitting and doing nothing, while the bodycount creeps ever upwards - while spewing out increasingly stale slogans.

If he was truly courageous he would put more troops back in. But that's just my take. Any guesses why he hasn't done this in all the time he's had up until the election? Because he would have been politically damaged by admitting a tactical error. Nice to know that people can be put in harms way to protect his career and reputation.

The troop levels are set by the Generals on the ground. If they want more they get more. Your just politicizing it for your own ammusment.

I suppose the troops got all that equipment and body armor they were missing. I suppose the generals who disagreed with Rumsfeld that he wasn't deploying enough troops to begin with got what they wanted and had the resources to secure the country to stop the enemy army ambushing them in the rear because they couldn't secure the towns that they went through.

Sounds like genius planning so far.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

The troop levels are set by the Generals on the ground. If they want more they get more.

You're so naive it's funny.

[I'm Gone 60]

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article....RTICLE_ID=52942

Baghdad: The new Saigon?

It appears the Beltway bombing halt agreed upon at the Bush-Pelosi summit is over.

The incoming chairmen of the Senate's armed services and foreign affairs committees, Carl Levin and Joe Biden – and Majority Leader Harry Reid – say a phased withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq will be their first priority. Troop redeployment, says Reid, "should start within the next few months."

White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolton counters: "I don't think we're going to be receptive to the notion there's a fixed timetable at which we automatically pull out, because that would be a true disaster for the Iraqi people."

John McCain says we need more troops to crush the Mahdi Army and militias, and achieve victory. If we set a deadline for withdrawal, said McCain, we risk a Saigon ending, with Americans being helicoptered off the roof of the U.S. embassy. McCain appears to be adopting the George Wallace stance of 1968 – "Win, or Get Out!"

And so we come to the endgame in a war into which we were plunged by Bush Republicans and those neoconservatives now scurrying back to their think tanks, and the Clinton-Kerry-Edwards-Biden-Reid-Daschle Democrats, who voted Bush a blank check in October 2002 to get the war issue "out of the way" before the elections.

America has been horribly served by both parties. And as the Democrats have now captured Congress, they assume co-responsibility for the retreat from Mesopotamia. Which is as it should be.

While our leaders never thought through the probable result of invading an Arab nation that had not attacked us, we had best think through the probable results of a pullout in 2007.

We are being told that by giving the Iraqis a deadline, after which we start to withdraw, we will stiffen their spines to take up greater responsibility for their own country. But there is as great or greater a likelihood that a U.S. pullout will break their morale and spirit, that the Iraqi government and army, seeing Americans heading for the exit ramp, will collapse before an energized enemy, and Shias, Sunnis and Kurds will scramble for security and survival among their own.

Arabs are not ignorant of history. They know that when we pulled out of South Vietnam, a Democratic Congress cut off aid to the Saigon regime, and every Cambodian and Vietnamese who had cast his lot with us wound up dead, in a "re-education camp" or among the boat people in the South China Sea whose wives and children were routinely assaulted by Thai pirates.

In that first year of "peace" in Southeast Asia, 20 times as many Cambodians perished as all the Americans who died in 10 years of war.

In Iraq, a collapse of the government and army in the face of an American pullout, followed by a civil-sectarian war, the break-up of the country and a strategic debacle for the United States – emboldening our enemies and imperiling our remaining friends in the Arab world – is a real possibility.

Yet what Edmund Burke said remains true: "[N]o war can be long carried on against the will of the people." And the American people are losing, if they have not lost, the will to continue this war. They are weary of the daily killing and dying, and of the endless talk of "progress" when all they see is death. They believe the war was a mistake, and they want to come home.

Our hawkish elites bemoan the fact that Americans seem ready to give up on Iraq when U.S. casualties are not 10 percent of those we took in the Korean War. That is because they do not understand the nation.

Americans are not driven by some ideological vocation to reform mankind. We do not have the patience or perseverance of great imperial peoples. If an issue is not seen as vital to our own liberty and security, we will not fight long for some abstraction like democracy, self-determination or human rights.

It is a myth that we went to war to save the world from fascism. We went to war in 1941 because Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. That Hitler had overrun France, booted the British off the continent and invaded Stalin's empire was not a reason to send American boys across the ocean to die.

In 1990, Americans were not persuaded to throw Iraq out of Kuwait until Bush 1 got to talking about Saddam's nuclear weapons. Even after 9-11, Americans were skeptical of marching to Baghdad until we were told Saddam was building weapons of mass destruction and probably intended to use them on us. Americans have often had to be lied into war.

Democrats are probably reading the country right. Americans will not send added troops to Iraq, as McCain urges. They want out of this war and are willing to take the consequences.

But those consequences are going to be ugly and enduring. That is what happens to nations that commit historic blunders.

[GaryC 7]

The troop levels are set by the Generals on the ground. If they want more they get more.

You're so naive it's funny.

And your so blinded by hate it's scary

Troop level in Iraq to remain through 2005

By Tom Squitieri and Dave Moniz, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — The U.S. military force in Iraq will remain at 138,000 troops through the end of next year, an acknowledgment that the Iraqi insurgency is more stubborn and dangerous than generals thought earlier this year.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told Pentagon reporters Tuesday that he approved 20,000 extra troops at the request of Gen. John Abizaid, top commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East.

"This is a difficult period, but our folks are there and are going to stay there," Rumsfeld said.

Troop levels in Iraq have fluctuated between 135,000 and 138,000 since mid-April.

The number of U.S. troops in Iraq had been scheduled to fall to 115,000 this month. But a surge in violence, which made April the deadliest month for U.S. troops since the March 2003 invasion, prompted the Pentagon to stretch the intended one-year tours of 20,000 troops. They were set to leave in April but now are scheduled to stay through June.

A decision by Spain and other U.S. allies to withdraw their forces or decline to extend deployments has required more U.S. forces.

The 20,000 new troops will include 5,000 Marines and 5,000 soldiers from the Army's 10th Mountain Division, a light infantry unit based at Fort Drum in New York. Rumsfeld said another 10,000 active-duty troops are being chosen to replace the rest of the 20,000 on extended duty. "We will not extend the same individuals beyond the 90 days," he said.

Those 20,000 troops will arrive this summer to relieve the Army's 1st Armored Division and the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment.

The Army and Marine Corps are hard-pressed to find substantial additional troops for Iraq duty. Of the Army's 10 divisions, parts or all of nine are already deployed in Iraq or Afghanistan.

An Army airborne brigade in the United States will be ready starting Friday to handle any emergency, said Army Lt. Gen. Richard Cody.

For the next rotation, the Army plans to call to active duty 37,000 National Guard and Reserve troops. They will be sent to Iraq late this year or early in 2005, defense officials said. Details were not available.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/20...ry-troops_x.htm

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

That is what happens to nations that commit historic blunders.

The blunder, though, was the illegal attack on that country and the pisspoor planning and execution of the war.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

The troop levels are set by the Generals on the ground. If they want more they get more.

You're so naive it's funny.

And your so blinded by hate it's scary

Troop level in Iraq to remain through 2005

By Tom Squitieri and Dave Moniz, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — The U.S. military force in Iraq will remain at 138,000 troops through the end of next year, an acknowledgment that the Iraqi insurgency is more stubborn and dangerous than generals thought earlier this year.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told Pentagon reporters Tuesday that he approved 20,000 extra troops at the request of Gen. John Abizaid, top commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East.

"This is a difficult period, but our folks are there and are going to stay there," Rumsfeld said.

Troop levels in Iraq have fluctuated between 135,000 and 138,000 since mid-April.

The number of U.S. troops in Iraq had been scheduled to fall to 115,000 this month. But a surge in violence, which made April the deadliest month for U.S. troops since the March 2003 invasion, prompted the Pentagon to stretch the intended one-year tours of 20,000 troops. They were set to leave in April but now are scheduled to stay through June.

A decision by Spain and other U.S. allies to withdraw their forces or decline to extend deployments has required more U.S. forces.

The 20,000 new troops will include 5,000 Marines and 5,000 soldiers from the Army's 10th Mountain Division, a light infantry unit based at Fort Drum in New York. Rumsfeld said another 10,000 active-duty troops are being chosen to replace the rest of the 20,000 on extended duty. "We will not extend the same individuals beyond the 90 days," he said.

Those 20,000 troops will arrive this summer to relieve the Army's 1st Armored Division and the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment.

The Army and Marine Corps are hard-pressed to find substantial additional troops for Iraq duty. Of the Army's 10 divisions, parts or all of nine are already deployed in Iraq or Afghanistan.

An Army airborne brigade in the United States will be ready starting Friday to handle any emergency, said Army Lt. Gen. Richard Cody.

For the next rotation, the Army plans to call to active duty 37,000 National Guard and Reserve troops. They will be sent to Iraq late this year or early in 2005, defense officials said. Details were not available.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/20...ry-troops_x.htm

Oooh 20,000. How many are needed to do the job?

That is what happens to nations that commit historic blunders.

The blunder, though, was the illegal attack on that country and the pisspoor planning and execution of the war.

Not to mention the continued "die hard" defence of that illegal war, as well as its piss-poor planning and execution.

[GaryC 7]

The troop levels are set by the Generals on the ground. If they want more they get more.

You're so naive it's funny.

And your so blinded by hate it's scary

Troop level in Iraq to remain through 2005

By Tom Squitieri and Dave Moniz, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — The U.S. military force in Iraq will remain at 138,000 troops through the end of next year, an acknowledgment that the Iraqi insurgency is more stubborn and dangerous than generals thought earlier this year.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told Pentagon reporters Tuesday that he approved 20,000 extra troops at the request of Gen. John Abizaid, top commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East.

"This is a difficult period, but our folks are there and are going to stay there," Rumsfeld said.

Troop levels in Iraq have fluctuated between 135,000 and 138,000 since mid-April.

The number of U.S. troops in Iraq had been scheduled to fall to 115,000 this month. But a surge in violence, which made April the deadliest month for U.S. troops since the March 2003 invasion, prompted the Pentagon to stretch the intended one-year tours of 20,000 troops. They were set to leave in April but now are scheduled to stay through June.

A decision by Spain and other U.S. allies to withdraw their forces or decline to extend deployments has required more U.S. forces.

The 20,000 new troops will include 5,000 Marines and 5,000 soldiers from the Army's 10th Mountain Division, a light infantry unit based at Fort Drum in New York. Rumsfeld said another 10,000 active-duty troops are being chosen to replace the rest of the 20,000 on extended duty. "We will not extend the same individuals beyond the 90 days," he said.

Those 20,000 troops will arrive this summer to relieve the Army's 1st Armored Division and the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment.

The Army and Marine Corps are hard-pressed to find substantial additional troops for Iraq duty. Of the Army's 10 divisions, parts or all of nine are already deployed in Iraq or Afghanistan.

An Army airborne brigade in the United States will be ready starting Friday to handle any emergency, said Army Lt. Gen. Richard Cody.

For the next rotation, the Army plans to call to active duty 37,000 National Guard and Reserve troops. They will be sent to Iraq late this year or early in 2005, defense officials said. Details were not available.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/20...ry-troops_x.htm

Oooh 20,000. How many are needed to do the job?

He asked for that many and got them. What do you want? The UN to set our troop levels?

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

The troop levels are set by the Generals on the ground. If they want more they get more.

You're so naive it's funny.

And your so blinded by hate it's scary

Troop level in Iraq to remain through 2005

By Tom Squitieri and Dave Moniz, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — The U.S. military force in Iraq will remain at 138,000 troops through the end of next year, an acknowledgment that the Iraqi insurgency is more stubborn and dangerous than generals thought earlier this year.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told Pentagon reporters Tuesday that he approved 20,000 extra troops at the request of Gen. John Abizaid, top commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East.

"This is a difficult period, but our folks are there and are going to stay there," Rumsfeld said.

Troop levels in Iraq have fluctuated between 135,000 and 138,000 since mid-April.

The number of U.S. troops in Iraq had been scheduled to fall to 115,000 this month. But a surge in violence, which made April the deadliest month for U.S. troops since the March 2003 invasion, prompted the Pentagon to stretch the intended one-year tours of 20,000 troops. They were set to leave in April but now are scheduled to stay through June.

A decision by Spain and other U.S. allies to withdraw their forces or decline to extend deployments has required more U.S. forces.

The 20,000 new troops will include 5,000 Marines and 5,000 soldiers from the Army's 10th Mountain Division, a light infantry unit based at Fort Drum in New York. Rumsfeld said another 10,000 active-duty troops are being chosen to replace the rest of the 20,000 on extended duty. "We will not extend the same individuals beyond the 90 days," he said.

Those 20,000 troops will arrive this summer to relieve the Army's 1st Armored Division and the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment.

The Army and Marine Corps are hard-pressed to find substantial additional troops for Iraq duty. Of the Army's 10 divisions, parts or all of nine are already deployed in Iraq or Afghanistan.

An Army airborne brigade in the United States will be ready starting Friday to handle any emergency, said Army Lt. Gen. Richard Cody.

For the next rotation, the Army plans to call to active duty 37,000 National Guard and Reserve troops. They will be sent to Iraq late this year or early in 2005, defense officials said. Details were not available.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/20...ry-troops_x.htm

Oooh 20,000. How many are needed to do the job?

He asked for that many and got them. What do you want? The UN to set our troop levels?

How many were the generals asking for at the outset of the conflict? Then look at how many they got, then look at the situation on the ground today. I'm sure you can connect the dots.

[I'm Gone 60]

That is what happens to nations that commit historic blunders.

The blunder, though, was the illegal attack on that country and the pisspoor planning and execution of the war.

He says that

"While our leaders never thought through the probable result of invading an Arab nation that had not attacked us, we had best think through the probable results of a pullout in 2007."

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

The troop levels are set by the Generals on the ground. If they want more they get more.

You're so naive it's funny.

And your so blinded by hate it's scary

So, what you are effectively suggesting is that the generals on the ground are fcuking incompetent. I, on the other hand, believe that they are being hung out to dry by an administration that won't admit that they fcuked up tremendously:

In fact, substantial evidence suggests that in developing the war plan Rumsfeld rejected the advice of top military commanders who warned that more troops would be necessary to secure postwar Iraq. And even after the end of "major combat operations," Rumsfeld reportedly squelched requests from military commanders -- as well as L. Paul Bremer III, who headed the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority until the transfer of sovereignty to Iraq in June 2004 -- for more troops.

Franks, the former commander-in-chief of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), has acknowledged that he felt more troops were needed in Iraq. He wrote in his recent book American Soldier (Regan, 2004) that he projected that 250,000 troops would be required to secure postwar Iraq, as he acknowledged in an August 16, 2004, appearance on CNN's Paula Zahn Now.

In an October 17, 2004, article on the Bush administration's Iraq policy, Knight Ridder reported that Rumsfeld successfully opposed higher troop levels that military planners thought were necessary. The article found that "[t]he administration also failed to provide some 100,000 additional U.S. troops that American military commanders originally wanted to help restore order and reconstruct a country." The article explained:

Central Command originally proposed a force of 380,000 to attack and occupy Iraq. Rumsfeld's opening bid was about 40,000, "a division-plus," said three senior military officials who participated in the discussions. Bush and his top advisers finally approved the 250,000 troops the commanders requested to launch the invasion. But the additional troops that the military wanted to secure Iraq after Saddam's regime fell were either delayed or never sent.

Four senior officers who were directly involved said Rumsfeld and Franks micromanaged the complex process of deciding when and how the troops and their equipment would be sent to Iraq, called the Time-Phased Force and Deployment Data, canceling some units, rescheduling others and even moving equipment from one ship to another.

As a result, two Army divisions that Centcom wanted to help secure the country weren't on hand when Baghdad fell and the country lapsed into anarchy, and a third, the 1st Cavalry from Fort Hood, Texas, fell so far behind schedule that on April 21 Franks and Rumsfeld dropped it from the plan.

Moreover, Gregory Hooker, CENTCOM's senior intelligence analyst for Iraq, who was deeply involved in prewar planning, described Rumsfeld's repeated desire to use fewer troops in his research paper Shaping the Plan for Operation Iraqi Freedom: The Role of Military Intelligence Assessments (Washington Institute for Near East Policy, May 2005). Hooker wrote that "near-constant demands from Rumsfeld and his aides for new versions of the war plan using fewer American troops wasted time and diverted attention from fleshing out a blueprint for the March 2003 invasion," according to a May 20 Knight Ridder article previewing the book.

New Yorker investigative reporter Seymour Hersh quoted anonymous military sources in an April 7, 2003, article -- before the fall of Baghdad and before lack of troop strength was widely recognized as an obstacle to stabilizing Iraq -- similarly describing Rumsfeld's rejection of plans calling for more troops:

Rumsfeld repeatedly overruled the senior Pentagon planners on the Joint Staff, the operating arm of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "He thought he knew better," one senior planner said. "He was the decision-maker at every turn." On at least six occasions, the planner told me, when Rumsfeld and his deputies were presented with operational plans -- the Iraqi assault was designated Plan 1003 -- he insisted that the number of ground troops be sharply reduced.

Even conservative Weekly Standard editor William Kristol has reported that "Gen. Tommy Franks had projected that he would need a quarter-million troops on the ground for that task" in a Washington Post op-ed criticizing Rumsfeld's failure to commit enough troops for "postwar stabilization."

Most famously, in February 2003, a few weeks before the invasion began, then-Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki, now retired, told Congress that "omething on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers ... would be required" to stabilize postwar Iraq. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz rejected this claim, insisting that he was "reasonably certain that they [the Iraqis] will greet us as liberators, and that will help us to keep [troop] requirements down." Rumsfeld shared Wolfowitz's optimism. "Rumsfeld said the post-war troop commitment would be less than the number of troops required to win the war. He also said 'the idea that it would take several hundred thousand U.S. forces, I think, is far from the mark,' " [CNN, 3/3/03]. Rumsfeld also retaliated against Shinseki. "Rumsfeld's office leaked word of Shinseki's replacement 15 months before Shinseki was due to retire, both embarrassing and neutralizing the Army's top officer," Knight Ridder's May 20 article recalled.

Similarly, though he is not a military commander, Bremer, who headed the Coalition Provisional Authority, stated in October 2004 that "We never had enough troops on the ground."

Contrary to Hume's assertion that if generals asked for more troops, "they'd get them," Rumsfeld maintained lower troop levels than commanders wanted during the post-invasion period. According to a February 7 article in Newsweek, Rumsfeld has effectively rejected at least one postwar appeal already, from Abizaid and other military commanders:

Ultimately, Bremer did ask for more troops. So did commanders in the field. But Rumsfeld and the brass balked at committing even more of the overstretched Army to bolster what they increasingly viewed as unrealistic occupation goals. Gen. John Abizaid, who took over from Gen. Tommy Franks as commander of CENTCOM, also asked for more soldiers, sources tell NEWSWEEK. He followed the usual practice, which is to dispatch a draft request to the Pentagon. But Abizaid was told not to send it up in final form. (The result, sources say, is that Rumsfeld was able to insist truthfully that no such request was received from the field.)

The April 12, 2004, New York Daily News reported that Abizaid "has been repeatedly discouraged from asking for more soldiers," according to a "senior military official." The article further quoted that official: "Rumsfeld has made it clear to the whole building that he wasn't interested in getting any requests for more troops."

Source

But you go ahead and continue with your blind hail Bush and hail Rumsfeld #######. They fcuked this thing up not the troops on the ground - which is what you are effectively suggesting. But you support the troops, eh?