WASHINGTON – Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld acknowledged Thursday that he had not expected the level of violence confronting U.S. forces in Iraq, but he stood by his decision to send fewer troops than some Army officials and lawmakers have argued were necessary to stabilize the country.
His remarks came during a Pentagon news conference at which Rumsfeld announced a three-month extension in tours for about 20,000 troops, keeping combat strength in place to deal with attacks by Sunni and Shiite insurgents that have led to record-high casualties for U.S. forces.
Rumsfeld said the extensions would allow the total number of U.S. troops to remain at about 135,000, superseding previous plans to reduce the level to about 115,000.
Asked a broad question about whether he could identify any mistakes he made before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Rumsfeld focused instead on his expectations for Iraq after U.S. forces invaded a year ago.
“If you had said to me a year ago, ‘Describe the situation you’ll be in today one year later,’ I don’t know many people who would have described it – I would not have – described it the way it happens to be today,” he said.
Elaborating a few minutes later, Rumsfeld added, “I certainly would not have estimated that we would have had the number of individuals lost that we have had lost in the last week.”
Only halfway over, April already ranks as the deadliest month of the war for the United States, with 92 U.S. troops killed. In all, 685 U.S. service members have died since the beginning of military operations in Iraq, 491 of them as a result of hostile action, according to Pentagon figures.
Pressed on whether, in retrospect, he should have sent more troops to Iraq months ago, Rumsfeld tossed the question to the officer at his side – Marine Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs – who defended the deployment as having achieved the right balance between too many and too few.
Pace said the original plan to reduce the number of troops in Iraq this spring, while rotating an entirely fresh set of forces into the country, had been devised to be flexible. Anticipating some rise in violence ahead of the scheduled June 30 handover of power in Iraq, U.S. commanders had arranged for incoming forces to overlap with outgoing ones, thereby achieving a temporary spike in the total number of troops in country.
“Everyone is, at this point, realizing that when everybody said this will be a period during which we will be tested a lot, this is what it meant,” said a senior Rumsfeld aide. “How it would unfold, I don’t think anyone knew.”
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