Speaker Speaking?
By Michael Reynolds | Related entries in Bad Decisions, WarGuess who now says, “It was an enormous mistake for us to try to occupy that country [Iraq] after June of 2003. We have to pull back, and we have to recognize it.”
This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 11th, 2006 and is filed under Bad Decisions, War. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
April 11th, 2006 at 1:24 pm
The problem was that Rumsfeld and the Joint Chiefs actually agreed with Newt and wanted to leave the country 30 days after “Mission Accomplished.” Not enough troops and equipment were deployed to occupy the country, rioting and terrorism ensued, and for every step we took towards the airport, we had to turn around and take two steps back to retaliate against people shooting at us. Eventually we got stuck there and had to knuckle-down.
April 11th, 2006 at 5:17 pm
What? Where was this stated publicly? Leave the country without securing the peace?
Again, it wasn’t inevitable that we failed. But because of our gross lack of planning over there, we have failed.
Still, I want to see where Rumsfeld said this. Please provide proof.
April 12th, 2006 at 12:57 am
I thought Newt was a conservative? Are we shifted around that much that he now looks liberal?
April 12th, 2006 at 10:33 am
It wasn’t stated publically, I saw it discussed on a PBS documentary called “Rumsfeld’s War.” The Pentagon planned for things like massive refugee flows, famine, and a possible Kurdish separatist movement from Turkey, but when it became clear that those things were not going to happen, they hoped to start drawing down troops in the summer and fall of 2003.