rummy did not or could not dispute that number "size of Iraqi insurgent forces is 200,000"...WTF???? and how many soldiers do we have in Iraq 140,000? time to BRING OUR TROOPS HOME!
did anyone else catch that exchange and why isn't it being talked about in MSM??
Transcript:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6923245/<snip>
MR. RUSSERT: The Iraqi intelligence services director said that the insurgency is larger than the U.S. Army; it is more than 200,000 people. Is he right?
SEC'Y RUMSFELD: Who said that?
MR. RUSSERT: The--Mohammad Abdul Sussami, the Iraqi Intelligence Service director, on January 3, 2005. He's a general.
SEC'Y RUMSFELD: Yeah, I've never seen that number, and I don't know where it came from.
MR. RUSSERT: It's a lot larger than the dead-enders that you had talked about some time ago.
SEC'Y RUMSFELD: I talked about it?
MR. RUSSERT: Yes.
SEC'Y RUMSFELD: I think I've always characterized it as a mix of people. There are some Ba'athists who are dead-enders; that's true. There are some jihadists who've come in from other countries, and Zarqawi and that team of people who are particularly lethal. There are criminals. There are always--I've always included...
MR. RUSSERT: But in June of 2003, we were talking about small elements, 10 to 20 people, no large network.
SEC'Y RUMSFELD: That's what they were functioning as during that period immediately after the major combat operations. That's right. And the insurgency has...
MR. RUSSERT: It's changed? It's changed?
SEC'Y RUMSFELD: Absolutely.
MR. RUSSERT: Let me...
SEC'Y RUMSFELD: That's why we keep sending in assessment teams.
MR. RUSSERT: Let me turn to what we need on the ground right now. About 40 to 45 percent of our troops are National Guard and Army Reserve. The head of the Army Reserve said that we are rapidly degenerating, "into a broken force." He's worried about retention, recruitment. The National Guard has reached only half its goal in January in terms of retention and recruitment. The Marine Corps for the first time in a decade has not reached its recruiting goal. Will it be necessary to say to the National Guard, "You may have to serve another 24 months, not just the original 24 months that we sent you, but we may break you and have to send you back again"?
SEC'Y RUMSFELD: We have no plans to do--to change the rulings and the methods that we're operating on at the present time. For the first time, we've begun to see some goals and targets not being fulfilled. But generally recruiting and retention has been on track and is today generally on track. One of the reasons that the National Guard and the Reserves are slightly down is because we're enlarging the size of the Army and, in that process, more people are staying in. And one of the pools that you draw on to build the Guard and Reserve is people coming off active duty, as you know. So there's fewer people coming off active duty. Therefore, we've increased the number of recruiters. We've increased the incentives, and we just simply have to recognize that the stress on the force is real, and take the kinds of steps that we've taken to anticipate that and see that we're able to attract and retain the people we need. We've still only used about 40 percent of the Guard and Reserve that's available in this country, since the beginning of the Afghan operation.
MR. RUSSERT: So you have no plans to change the rules in terms of extending...
SEC'Y RUMSFELD: No, the rules--there's been a debate in the press...
MR. RUSSERT: Yes.
SEC'Y RUMSFELD: ...about whether you wanted to change 24 months to cumulative or consecutive, and it's being left at consecutive, not cumulative.
MR. RUSSERT: Let me show you some comments that some have made...
SEC'Y RUMSFELD: Or cumulative. I misspoke.
MR. RUSSERT: Yeah, I understand. Some things that members of Congress has said. This is Susan Collins, a Republican--not a Democrat, Republican: "I think there are increasing concerns about
leadership of the war, the repeated failures to predict the strengths of the insurgency, the lack of essential safety equipment for our troops, the reluctance to expand the number of troops."
I want to talk--we've talked about insurgency. I want to bring you back to the whole debate about the use of essential safety equipment for our troops and take you back to December--we haven't seen you since then--when Thomas Wilson stood up and asked you a question. I want to show you that exchange and come back and talk about it.
(Videotape, December 8, 2004):
SPC. THOMAS WILSON: Now, why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles and why don't we have those resources readily available to us?
SEC'Y RUMSFELD: As you know, you go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.
And if you think about it, you can have all the armor in the world on a tank and a tank can be blown up. And you can have an up-armored Humvee and it can be blown up.
(End videotape)
MR. RUSSERT: Now, Specialist Wilson did acknowledge he worked with a journalist in crafting that question.
SEC'Y RUMSFELD: Yeah, but wait a minute. Let me get into this a little bit.
MR. RUSSERT: Sure.
SEC'Y RUMSFELD: That was unfair and it was selectively taking out two sentences from a long exchange--there it is--that took place. And when you suggested that that's how I answered that question, that is factually wrong.
MR. RUSSERT: No, we...
SEC'Y RUMSFELD: That is not how I answered that question.
MR. RUSSERT: But, Mr. Secretary, it clearly represents the exchange and...
SEC'Y RUMSFELD: It does not.
MR. RUSSERT: All right. What is missing?
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
