Dookiestix wrote:Bush propaganda:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6180514/
WASHINGTON - The former U.S. official who governed Iraq after the invasion said yesterday that the United States made two major mistakes: not deploying enough troops in Iraq and then not containing the violence and looting immediately after the ouster of Saddam Hussein.
Ambassador L. Paul Bremer, administrator for the U.S.-led occupation government until the handover of political power on June 28, said he still supports the decision to intervene in Iraq but said a lack of adequate forces hampered the occupation and efforts to end the looting early on.
"We paid a big price for not stopping it because it established an atmosphere of lawlessness," he said yesterday in a speech at an insurance conference in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va. "We never had enough troops on the ground."
Echoes of Kerry's criticism
Bremer's comments were striking because they echoed contentions of many administration critics, including Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry, who argue that the U.S. government failed to plan adequately to maintain security in Iraq after the invasion. Bremer has generally defended the U.S. approach in Iraq but in recent weeks has begun to criticize the administration for tactical and policy shortfalls.
The former administrator of the Coalition in Iraq, Paul Bremer has given a speech and plenty of ammunition to the Democrats. In his speech yesterday in West Virginia, Bremer said he supports the war, but that there weren't enough troops. Not exactly the support the Bush administration was looking for from their former man in Baghdad. But was that what he really said?
Speaking about the looting that happened early on, Bremer said "We paid a big price for not stopping it because it established an atmosphere of lawlessness. We never had enough troops on the ground." Now, what he meant and what the Kerry campaign and the media is going to say he meant are two different things.
He is talking about when he first arrived in Baghdad, not now. He says there weren't enough troops then, and he was right. that's why his predecessor was fired and he was hired, because they needed a change. Nothing new here. In a later clarification, Bremer said as much, saying "I believe that we currently have sufficient troop levels in Iraq." He said references to troop levels in recent speeches he made were about when he first got to Baghdad in May of 2003 "and when I believed we needed either more coalition troops or Iraqi security forces to address the looting."
He also said he strongly supports President Bush's re-election. Let's see how much of this gets reported.
About the looting: The problem wasn't that we didn't have enough troops on the ground. The problem was that the troops weren't allowed to do what they needed to do to stop the lawlessness from the beginning ... and that includes shooting looters. That's life in a war zone. You loot --- you die
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