Rumsfeld, Bush vow to stay U.S. course in Iraq
Undeterred by attacks on GIs, White House says it has enough troops on
ground
BY PATRICK O’NEILL
Hours after a missile downed a U.S. helicopter near Fallujah, Iraq, on
November 2, killing 16 GIs, U.S. secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld
said on the Fox News Sunday television program, “Our goal has to be to
continue doing what we’re doing on the global war on terror, and that
is going well. We are capturing and killing a lot of terrorists.”
Arguing directly against liberal politicians and pundits who are
criticizing Washington’s course in Iraq, the defense secretary quipped,
“Sitting around wringing your hands and saying, ‘It’s horrible, it’s
horrible, everything is terrible’ is nonsense. It isn’t all terrible.
There’s some darn good stuff happening.” He listed the formation of the
U.S.-handpicked Iraqi Governing Council, the introduction of a new
currency, the opening of a Central Bank, and the reopening of schools
and hospitals as accomplishments of the U.S.-run regime.
Referring to the U.S. casualties that morning, Rumsfeld stated later on
ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” television show: “In a
long, hard war, we’re going to have tragic days, as this is. But they
are necessary. They are part of a war that’s difficult and
complicated.”
During a number of lengthy interviews that morning, Rumsfeld said that
U.S. officers are making progress in stabilizing the occupation, and
have no plans to bolster the number of U.S. troops. Rather, he said,
tens of thousands of Iraqi soldiers and police, who function under U.S.
command, are shouldering more of the “security” burden.
In a speech the next day to employees of Craneworks, a small business
in Birmingham, Alabama, U.S. president George Bush spoke along similar
lines, without even mentioning the downing of the U.S. helicopter in
Fallujah. “We will win the war on terror, there’s no doubt in my mind.
We will not rest, we will not tire,” Bush said. “The terrorists and the
killers and those who harbor terrorists cannot stand the thought of a
free society in their midst. That’s why the mission in Iraq is vital….
We’ll defeat the terrorists there so we don’t have to face them on our
own streets.
“The enemy in Iraq believes America will run, that’s why they’re
willing to kill innocent civilians, relief workers, coalition troops,”
he said. “America will never run. America will do what is necessary to
make our country more secure.”
Attacks on the U.S.-led forces run as high as two or three dozen a day,
said Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq.
While Iraqi civilians have been the worst hit, casualties among U.S.
soldiers have mounted. Since May 1, when Bush declared combat
operations over, the death toll among U.S. forces has risen to
238—nearly double the 139 killed during the invasion. There are no
official estimates for the number of Iraqi dead or wounded.
Rumsfeld, Bush, and other officials have aggressively defended their
administration’s course after scoring several victories over their
international and domestic critics last month. These included the
October 16 unanimous vote of the United Nations Security Council
legitimizing the U.S.-run regime in Iraq, and Congress’s approval down
to the last penny of the $87 billion requested by Bush to fund the
occupation and reconstruction of Iraq and Afghanistan.
The debate continues in ruling-class circles, however, even as those
who argue that Iraq has become a quagmire have suffered political
blows. The New York Times, a consistent voice of the liberal
opposition, carried a feature article in its November 2 Sunday magazine
entitled “Blueprint for a Mess: How the Bush administration’s prewar
planners bungled postwar Iraq.”
The paper’s conservative columnist, William Safire, expressed a
different view the next day. “The coalition is clearly winning on two
of the three war fronts,” he wrote. “The people of Iraq’s Shiite south
and Kurdish north—80 percent of the population of 23 million—are making
substantial progress toward reconstruction and self-governance. But the
battle within the Sunni triangle around Baghdad—where Saddam’s
rapacious sons and secret police long victimized other Iraqis—is not
yet won.”
On November 2, Democratic senator Joseph Biden called for more troops
to be sent to Iraq while a local army and police force is trained, even
if such a step proved “very, very unpopular” in the United States. He
added, “We have to be prepared to go back to our European friends and
say, ‘We need more help. We’re willing to give you more say in the
formation of this government.’”
Responding to such arguments, Rumsfeld told NBC that in recent months
occupying forces have trained up to 100,000 Iraqi soldiers and police.
He cited the deaths of 85 of them as evidence of their participation in
patrols. In addition, he said, London and other governments have
maintained a stable number of 30,000 troops. These two developments
have enabled the Pentagon to reduce its forces from 150,000 to 130,000,
he said.
Bush and Rumsfeld both said that the attacks on U.S. forces are carried
out primarily by remnants of the brutal Baath Party dictatorship of
Saddam Hussein who are active in the “triangle” between Baghdad and
areas north of the Iraqi capital, but have little influence elsewhere.
They have also accused Iran and Syria of letting “foreign terrorists”
enter Iraq through their territory.
British and French government officials have backed Bush’s claims that
“foreigners” are part of the attacks. According to the New York Times,
French investigative judge Louis Bruguière said “dozens of poor and
middle-class Muslim men had left France for Iraq since the summer.”
Meanwhile, French foreign minister Dominique de Villepin said he
opposed pulling out of Iraq now after a meeting of foreign ministers
from Europe and Africa. De Villepin, who had argued against the U.S.-UK
invasion as a spokesman for French imperialism, said, “Obviously a
pullout from Iraq today would be catastrophic and would absolutely not
correspond to the demands of the situation.”
In debates in the UN Security Council during the buildup to the war, De
Villepin had argued that UN inspections and sanctions should be used
instead of an invasion.
According to former Iraqi deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz, who
surrendered to U.S. troops April 24, Paris’s stance contributed to
convincing Hussein that the imperialist invasion plans would not come
to fruition. The November 3 Washington Post reported that Aziz told
U.S. interrogators that representatives of both Paris and Moscow had
told the Iraqi ruler they would use their veto power in the UN Security
Council to block approval for an invasion.
“According to Aziz,” the Post said, “Hussein concluded after private
talks with French and Russian contacts that the United States would
probably wage a long air war first…. By hunkering down and putting up a
stiff defense, he might buy enough time to win a cease-fire brokered by
Paris and Moscow.
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