US 'Never' Had Enough Troops in Iraq: Bremer

Published on Tuesday, October 5, 2004 by Agence France Presse

US 'Never' Had Enough Troops in Iraq: Bremer

The former US governor of Iraq has admitted the United States "never" had enough ground troops in Iraq to establish firm control of the country, directly contradicting assertions by President George W. Bush and top Pentagon officials that the US military had what it needed to win the war.

Paul Bremer has admitted the United States "never" had enough ground troops in Iraq to establish firm control of the country, directly contradicting assertions by President George W. Bush and top Pentagon officials that the US military had what it needed to win the war. (AFP/POOL/Laszlo Balogh)
The admission, made in a speech Monday, was certain to add fuel to already heated exchanges between President George W. Bush and his Democratic rival, John Kerry, who has repeatedly accused th president of failing to adequately plan for post-war Iraq.

"We never had enough troops on the ground," Ambassador Paul Bremer told a conference of insurance professionals in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia.

He said the lack of adequate patrolling in the aftermath of the fall of Baghdad had resulted in what he called "horrid" looting.

"We paid a big price for not stopping it because it established an atmosphere of lawlessness," Bremer said.

The remarks echoed a charge made by the Massachusetts senator during the nationally-televised pre-election debate last Thursday, in which he insisted the administration had ignored pre-war advice even from top military professionals, including former Army chief of staff general Eric Shinseki.

Shinseki told Congress in February 2003 that the occupation of Iraq could require "several hundred thousand troops" -- only to be rebuked by his civilian boss, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz.

"Instead of listening to him, they retired him," Kerry fumed. "They didn't do the planning."

Bremer's remarks drew a stark contrast with repeated upbeat statements by Bush, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other top administration officials, who have insisted the United States had enough forces in Iraq.

About 133,000 US troops are currently deployed in Iraq, forming the bulk of an international coalition that toppled the government of Saddam Hussein, according to top defense officials. Other coalition forces have a total of 23,500 soldiers in the country.

The US failure to find alleged Iraqi weapons of mass destruction notwithstanding, Bremer said he agreed with Bush's decision to use force in Iraq because there was a "real possibility" Saddam Hussein might have provided these weapons to terrorist groups that had vowed to kill Americans.

"The status quo was simply untenable," he insisted. "I am more than ever convinced that regime change was the right thing to do."

He dismissed charges that the administration had no plans for post-war Iraq, but acknowledged that many of these plans were inadequate.

"There was planning, but planning for a situation that didnt arise," he said, mentioning pre-war fears of a large-scale refugee crisis or the possibility that Saddam Hussein might blow up Iraqs oil fields.

"Could it have been done better?" the former Iraq administrator went on to ask. "Frankly, I didnt spend a lot of time looking back."

In publicly acknowledging shortcomings in pre-war planning Bremer joins a long list of US officials and military experts, who have accused the administration of trying to conduct the war on the cheap -- and eschewing a politically nettlesome and expensive decision to boost the size of the military.

Republican Senator John McCain and his Democratic colleague, Joseph Biden, have been long campaigning to have least two new Army divisions added to the existing 10.

Retired General Barry McCaffrey, commander the 24th Mechanized Infantry Division during the 1991 Gulf War, has said the United States entered Iraq with a "grossly anemic" military force.

Even Rumsfeld, speaking in New York Monday, admitted that there were "some things that worked very well and some things that don't work quite so well" in Iraq.

source: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1005-02.htm