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| Rumsfeld Cries Foul on Obama Claim Troop Requests for Afghanistan Were Denied |
| 2009-12-03 |
| Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Wednesday lashed out at President Obama for claiming the Bush administration rebuffed commanders' repeated requests for more troops in Afghanistan. In a rare break in his public silence since leaving the Pentagon, Rumsfeld rejected the claim as a "bald misstatement" and "disservice" that cannot go unanswered. "Such a bald misstatement, at least as it pertains to the period I served as secretary of defense, deserves a response," Rumsfeld said in a written statement. "I am not aware of a single request of that nature between 2001 and 2006." The president leveled the charge in his speech Tuesday night outlining his plan to send 30,000 more U.S. troops into Afghanistan. In his speech, Obama gave a detailed history of the Afghanistan war starting with the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. He argued that the Iraq war drew needed resources away from Afghanistan, allowing the situation to deteriorate since 2003. "Throughout this period, our troop levels in Afghanistan remained a fraction of what they were in Iraq," Obama said. "Commanders in Afghanistan repeatedly asked for support to deal with the reemergence of the Taliban, but these reinforcements did not arrive." White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs explained Wednesday that Obama was referring to requests that came in during 2008, and suggested Rumsfeld was on thin ice with his criticism. "I will let Secretary Rumsfeld explain ... whether he thinks that the effort in Afghanistan was sufficiently resourced during his tenure as secretary of defense," he said. But if Obama were referring to the 2008 period, he would seem to have been pointing the finger at his own secretary of defense, Robert Gates, who served in the same position in the previous administration. Rumsfeld said in his statement the White House should make public any such requests if they exist to back up the allegation. "The president's assertion does a disservice to the truth and, in particular, to the thousands of men and women in uniform who have fought, served and sacrificed in Afghanistan," Rumsfeld said. He urged Congress to review the claim in the upcoming debate to "determine exactly what requests were made, who made them, and where and why in the chain of command they were denied." Unlike former Vice President Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld has kept largely out of the public eye since leaving the administration after the 2006 mid-term elections in which Republicans suffered huge losses, largely the result of setbacks in the Iraq war. |
| Posted by:gorb |
| #2 Right, LH. Perhaps instead of denied requests, someone can instead produce evidence of that. Ya know, something akin to Gen. Jones' comment to the Afghanistan brass earlier this year (!!!). How about the Bush strategy review that was handed over - was that based on a quiet suppression of military requests too? Two things. First, this is a good example of the correction of misinformation and slander that should have been aggressively performed from 9/11 onwards - and which the Bush administration failed to perform even once in all those years. The gigantic mountain of lies and distortion so many important issues ranging from intel to war strategy to the Geneva Conventions and on and on now serves as "knowledge" for many. Second, things are worse than people think within the military. Some senior Army brass in Iraq were so committed to a nutty strategy of reconstruction before security that they ended up in shouting matches with civilians who called them on the absurdity of their approach in meetings in Baghdad. That is, there is reason to believe that the ineffective strategy in Iraq in 05/06 was absolutely not crammed down the Army's throat. |
| Posted by: Verlaine 2009-12-03 12:04 |
| #1 I thought it was well understood that Rummy had made it very clear during 2004 that he thought there were enough troops in Iraq, and that requests for more were not what he wanted. And so there were none. I presume the same MO was applied to Afghanistan. |
| Posted by: liberalhawk 2009-12-03 11:27 |