U.S. Studied Bremer's '04 Bid for More Troops
13 Jan. Washington Post - U.S. Studied Bremer's '04 Bid for More Troops.
Quote:
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said yesterday that he seriously considered a 2004 memo from L. Paul Bremer, then the senior U.S. official in Iraq, calling for tens of thousands more U.S. troops to quell the insurgency. But he said military commanders and service chiefs disagreed with Bremer.
Bremer's memo, dated May 18, 2004, urged Rumsfeld to dispatch as many as two additional divisions -- or about 30,000 troops -- to Iraq, to meet myriad demands, including fighting insurgents, border control and securing convoy routes. The request, disclosed in Bremer's new book on his year-long tenure in Iraq, reflected what he said was his fear that the United States was becoming "the worst of all things -- an ineffective occupier."
Rumsfeld, speaking yesterday at a Pentagon news briefing, recalled that he showed the Bremer memo to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff then, Gen. Richard B. Myers, saying: "This is a reasonable proposal from a reasonable person; let's look at it."
But after evaluating the proposal, the Joint Chiefs of Staff concurred with U.S. commanders responsible for Iraq that troop levels were adequate, said Gen. Peter Pace, who succeeded Myers as chairman of the Joint Chiefs and appeared with Rumsfeld at yesterday's briefing...