Posted on 01/08/2006 9:32:37 PM PST by jmc1969
L. Paul Bremer, who led the U.S. civilian occupation authority in Iraq after the 2003 invasion, urged U.S. President George W. Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to increase U.S. postwar troop strength in the country, but his pleas were ignored, the former diplomat said.
In an interview on NBC Television broadcast Sunday night, Bremer said he sent a memo to Rumsfeld suggesting that half a million soldiers would be needed, three times the number deployed by the Bush administration.
"I never had any reaction from him," Bremer told Brian Williams".
Bremer, on a media blitz in connection with release of his book on Iraq, acknowledged that in November 2003 he told Vice President Dick Cheney he was worried that there was no military strategy for Iraq and that the policy was driven more by the Pentagon's plan to bring troops home by the spring of 2004.
"The vice president said to me, 'Well, I have similar concerns,'" Bremer said in the interview.
"He thought there was something to be said for the argument that we didn't have a strategy for victory at that time," the diplomat added.
(Excerpt) Read more at alertnet.org ...
Reuters is more than willing to help.
We didn't have a half-a-million troops, so we couldn't have deployed them to theater no matter what Bremer wanted.
We could have ddeployed, if we'd wanted to, half-a-million poorly trained draftees, but I don't see how that would have improved things.
Lets see the memo and find out what it really says.. Nice to see more people pimping their book by slaming Bush, etc.
Let the GENERALS and Pentagon decide what troop- levels are needed.
Let the civilians deal with the political BS.
When Bremer graduates from The Point or USNA, or USAFA, and spends 25 years or so learning the ropes, maybe we will let him have some input on what is needed militarily.
Until then, deal with what you actually have experience with , Bremer and don't tell your betters how to fight a war.
I agree with you that we couldn't keep a half a million man deployment for very long. That is why I think the real mistake was not deciding Iraq needs a real military until after the Madhi uprising and the first Battle of Fallujah in April 2004. The Pentagon planned for the Iraqi Army to be about 60,000 men strong and focus mainly on clearing mines while the US fought the insurgency.
Bremer screwed up himself ....so he is trying to make money by writing a book pointing fingers at the Pentagon and the White House...
DO NOT buy that book...
It seems a hell of alot of people even so called Republicans have been coming out of the woodwork to sell their books about the CIA, Iraq, or Afghanistan and in order to publicise the books they all seem to deflect blame for their own failures onto others.
mainly the WH of course.
""I never had any reaction from him," Bremer told Brian Williams". "
Perhaps because he was so far off base?
I actually think looking back the coup (with US air support and some US ground support) would have worked best.
The vast majority of the Iraqi military would have been loyal to someone like Allawi if we placed him there and bribed the right people.
But, it is like crying over spilled milk, it is fun to talk about counterfactuals, but you can never tell 100% what would have happened if X was changed in the past.
There turned out to be unexpected benifits going the hard way as we ended up doing. Zarqawi has managed to turn the Arab world against al-Qaeda in a way that would have never happened if the war had been over quickly.
Well, given that the regime was toppled VERY quickly with comparatively tiny losses compared to what was predicted, I'd say that they did it just about right.
Oh, by the way, my first post wasn't particularly directed at you, I was just spouting off and yours was the last post, so I clicked on it to reply.
I'd ignore a diplomat giving me military suggestions before I ignore a military commander giving me diplomatic suggestions.
Oh, and I completely disagree that a coup would have worked.
Even with Saddam in shackles and behind bars, a huge percentage of people are afraid of him, and most of the old command structure (those that are still alive and free) would jump back in his camp if he escaped or was released tomorrow. I don't care who you bribed and how many conventional bombs you promised drop.
While the "Average Iraqi" probably would join a coup against saddam TODAY, the idea that they would have done so three years ago is IMHO laughable.
There is a decent chance of that sort of thing working in Iran in the next year so, and even remotely possible in Syria, but in Iraq, 2003??? No way. Whole different situation.
Regardless of whether or not Bremer is pimping a book, I think he IS right about the troop level in Iraq. It's obvious we've been trying to pacify the country on the "cheap". We need to be killing every terrorist in Iraq or entering the country. Unfortunately GW made the stupid campaign pledge of no military draft on his watch.
It is the political situation holding us back: The guys over there already COULD have wiped out most of the terrorists along ago, and sent most of the remaining running.
As long as we have to worry about:
colateral damage,
"public relations'',
''Political Correctness'',
what the Germans, Russians, Canadians and Kofi think,
and guys like Murtha and Kerry, the New York Times at home
we could put 10,000,000 troops in there and not achieve 'pacification'.
All that more troops with the current political / diplomatic / pseudo-religious situation there would achieve is to provide more 'targets of opportunity for the bad guys, and more resentment throughout the world, because it would indeed be seen even more as an occupation force... And would lessen the likelyhood amongst the "good Iraqis" that they would be willing to take on any responsibilities of fighting or governing for themselves.
A little less political / diplomatic restraint on the troops, and we could do the job with even fewer troops than we have now.
I agree. Very successful and will be lauded for decades.
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