Defense Secretary Rumsfeld denied yesterday that the Iraq war has become a quagmire.
“Anyone who says we have lost the war or are losing the war is wrong,” Rumsfeld said. He added that setting a timetable for U.S. troop withdrawal “would throw a lifeline” to terrorists who have suffered significantly recently.
Vice President Cheney a few days ago said that the insurgents were in their “last throes.”
I’m not sure what make-believe-world these men live in, or whether in their attempt to convince the American people of this nonsense they have deluded themselves into believing their own propaganda.
Just take a look at what the men really responsible for the fighting in Iraq have to say:
General John Abizaid, head of the U.S. Central Command, which has responsibility for U.S. operations in the Mideast, said that more foreign fighters were coming into Iraq and that the insurgency’s “strength is about the same” as it was six months ago. “There’s a lot of work to be done against the insurgency,” he said.
Having just returned from a visit to Iraq and Afghanistan, Gen. Abizaid said he was surprised at how many American commanders and troops asked whether the military was losing support at home for the war. “It was a real concern,” Gen. Abizaid said.
Gen. George Casey, the top commander in Iraq, also appeared at the hearings yesterday with Rumsfeld. When questioned about whether the insurgency was in its final throes, as V.P. Cheney suggested, or was essentially holding its own, as Lt. Gen. John R. Vines, stated this week, Gen. Casey admitted: “There’s a long way to go here. Things in Iraq are hard.”
Hard? Is that what you call it?
So far, as of June, 23, 2005, 1725 Americans have been killed in Iraq. The New York Times reported today that:
“Four car bombs exploded in a central Baghdad commercial district early Thursday morning, spewing shattered glass and bits of human skin over the streets while killing at least 17 people. The bombings raised the toll in the capital to at least 43 dead and 100 wounded in a string of similar attacks that began Wednesday night.”
That’s 43 dead and 100 wounded — in just one day. A few paragraphs later, the article notes:
“The attacks demonstrate the insurgents’ ability to strike at will across the capital despite a month long crackdown by United States and Iraqi troops that commanders have said has been aimed primarily at curbing car bombings. In Baghdad alone, an insurgent offensive aimed at destabilizing the new Shiite majority government killed more than 700 people in the past month, most of them in car bombings.”
This, I submit, is the reality of the war in Iraq — not the poppycock that Rumsfeld and Cheney are trying to force down our throats. The military officers who are fighting the insurgency on a daily basis don’t agree with the rosy picture Rumsfeld and Cheney want to paint.
Things are not going well in Iraq. Nearly 2000 coalition troops have died so far and the insurgents are killing hundreds of troops and civilians each month. The coalition forces don’t have control in Baghdad — let alone all of Iraq.
There is a growing feeling within Congress that the violence in Iraq is not weakening — in fact, it may be escalating — U.S. efforts notwithstanding. There is a feeling that ever-increasing American combat deaths is eroding public support for the war.
“Public support in my state is turning,” Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, told Rumsfeld. “People are beginning to question. And I don’t think it’s a blip on the radar screen. We have a chronic problem on our hands.”
I expect Rumsfeld and Cheney disagree with that assessment.