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December 3rd, 2006 - Rumsfeld
Memo on Iraq Proposed ‘Major’ Change News
article by the New York Times |
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Rumsfeld Memo on Iraq
Proposed ‘Major’ Change By Michael R. Gordon and David S. Cloud New York Times December 3rd, 2006 Washington, Dec. 2 - Two
days before he resigned as defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld submitted a
classified memo to the White House that acknowledged that the Bush
administration’s strategy in Iraq was not working and called for a major
course correction. “In my view it is time for a
major adjustment,” wrote Mr. Rumsfeld, who has been a symbol of a dogged
stay-the-course policy. “Clearly, what U.S. forces are currently doing in
Iraq is not working well enough or fast enough.” Nor did Mr. Rumsfeld seem
confident that the administration would readily develop an effective
alternative. To limit the political fallout from shifting course, he
suggested the administration consider a campaign to lower public
expectations. “Announce that whatever new
approach the U.S. decides on, the U.S. is doing so on a trial basis,” he
wrote. “This will give us the ability to readjust and move to another course,
if necessary, and therefore not ‘lose.’ ” “Recast the U.S. military
mission and the U.S. goals (how we talk about them) - go minimalist,” he
added. The memo suggests frustration with the pace of turning over
responsibility to the Iraqi authorities; in fact, the memo calls for examination
of ideas that roughly parallel troop withdrawal proposals presented by some
of the White House’s sharpest Democratic critics. (Text of the Memo) The memo’s discussion of
possible troop reduction options offers a counterpoint to Mr. Rumsfeld’s frequent
public suggestions that discussions about force levels are driven by requests
from American military commanders. It also puts on the table
several ideas for troop redeployments or withdrawals, even as there have been
recent pronouncements from American commanders emphasizing the need to
maintain troop levels for the time being. The memorandum sometimes has
a finger-wagging tone, as Mr. Rumsfeld says that the Iraqis must “pull up
their socks,” and suggests that reconstruction aid should be withheld in
violent areas to avoid rewarding “bad behavior.” Other options called for
shrinking the number of bases, establishing benchmarks that would mark the
Iraqis’ progress toward political, economic and security goals and conducting
a “reverse embeds” program to attach Iraqi soldiers to American squads. The memo was finished one
day after President Bush interviewed Robert M. Gates, the president of Texas
A&M University, as a potential successor to Mr. Rumsfeld and one day
before the midterm elections. By then it was clear that the Republicans
appeared likely to suffer a setback at the polls and that the administration
was poised to begin reconsidering its Iraq strategy. The memo provides no
indication that Mr. Rumsfeld intended to leave his Pentagon post. It is
unclear whether he knew at that point that he was about to be replaced,
though the White House has said that Mr. Bush and Mr. Rumsfeld had a number
of conversations on the matter. Told that The New York Times
had obtained a copy of it, a Pentagon spokesman, Eric Ruff, confirmed its
authenticity. “As it became clear that people were considering options for
the way forward, the secretary had some views on the subject, and this memo
reflects those views,” he said. At the Pentagon, Mr.
Rumsfeld has been famous for his “snowflakes” - memos that drift down to the
bureaucracy from on high and that are used to ask questions, stimulate debate
and shape policy. Mr. Rumsfeld’s Nov. 6 memorandum, circulated as part of the
administration’s review of Iraq policy, is written in that spirit and with
the same blunt aphorisms that Mr. Rumsfeld frequently uses in public. Unlike the lawyerly memo on
Iraq policy submitted Nov. 8 by Stephen J. Hadley, the national security
adviser, Mr. Rumsfeld’s listed more than a dozen “illustrative options” that
the defense secretary did not endorse, but suggested merited serious
consideration. “Many of these options could, and in a number of cases, should
be done in combination with others,” Mr. Rumsfeld advised. With Mr. Rumsfeld’s
resignation, the options no longer have the same weight. In recent weeks,
some have been discarded as the Bush administration tries to adjust its
military and political strategy in Iraq. But others, like increasing the
number of advisers attached to Iraqi forces, live on and have also been
recommended by others. Mr. Rumsfeld, who has
presided over two wars and is one of the longest-serving Pentagon chiefs, is
scheduled to leave when his designated successor, Mr. Gates, is confirmed by
the Senate, expected later this month. Titled “Iraq - Illustrative
New Courses of Action,” the memo reflects mounting concern over a war that, as
Mr. Rumsfeld put it, has evolved from “major combat operations to
counterterrorism, to counterinsurgency, to dealing with death squads and
sectarian violence.” The first section of the
memo contains two pages of options that Mr. Rumsfeld describes as “above the
line” ideas worthy of consideration. Some that Mr. Rumsfeld found intriguing
appear to reflect his long-held view that the United States should use
relatively modest force in intervening in foreign countries to avoid creating
a dependency on American power. That approach, critics have charged, left the
United States unprepared to deal with the chaos that followed the ouster of
Saddam Hussein. Mr. Rumsfeld has frequently
emphasized the difficulty of stabilizing Iraq and the need to turn over
responsibility to Iraqi authorities as quickly as possible. But he has also
been a forceful, even cantankerous, defender of American policy, often
insisting his critics were unduly pessimistic. On Oct. 31, just a week before
finishing the memo, Mr. Rumsfeld told a radio interviewer, “I feel that we
are making good progress with the piece of it the Defense Department has.” One option Mr. Rumsfeld
offered calls for modest troop withdrawals “so Iraqis know they have to pull
up their socks, step up and take responsibility for their country.” Another option calls for
redeploying American troops from “vulnerable positions” in Baghdad and other
cities to safer areas in Iraq or Kuwait, where they would act as a “quick
reaction force.” That idea is similar to a plan suggested by Representative
John P. Murtha, a Pennsylvania Democrat, a plan that the White House has
soundly rebuffed. Still another option calls
for consolidating the number of American bases in Iraq to 5 from 55 by July
2007, a considerable shrinking of the American footprint. At the same time,
Mr. Rumsfeld all but dismisses the idea of setting a firm date for removing forces
from Iraq, listing it as one of the less palatable ideas. One of the more provocative
options would punish provinces that failed to cooperate with the Americans by
withdrawing economic assistance and security. “Stop rewarding bad behavior,
as was done in Falluja when they pushed in reconstruction funds, and start
rewarding good behavior,” the option reads. “No more reconstruction
assistance in areas where there is violence.” Some military officers have
said that the idea of denying assistance in some areas ignores the fact that
many Iraqis are afraid to cooperate with the Americans for fear of
retaliation by insurgents. Falluja has been the focus
of reconstruction efforts following an offensive by Americans that crippled
city services and damaged scores of buildings, leaving the United States few
options beyond rebuilding or evacuating the city. Now, it is considered by
the Marines to be one of the few relatively stable areas in the dangerous
Anbar Province. Many of the other towns in the region have become even more
hostile because the economic assistance has been minimal, leaving the
residents feeling neglected by the authorities in Baghdad, military officers
say. Then, too, work on
infrastructure that sprawls across the country, like the electrical grid and
the oil pipelines, network, cannot be limited to nonviolent areas. “There is an element of
throwing in the towel and effectively giving up on at least some areas of the
country,” said James Dobbins, a former State Department official and director
of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at RAND. In any case, administration
officials indicated this week that withholding assistance was not under
serious consideration. Reflecting exasperation with
much of the American government, another option in the memo raises the
possibility of using military reservists to “beef up” the Iraqi government’s
ministries. “Give up on trying to get other USG Departments to do it,” he
writes, referring to other United States government agencies. Taking a leaf out of Mr.
Hussein’s book, Mr. Rumsfeld seemed to see some merit in the former
dictator’s practice of paying Iraqi leaders. “Provide money to key political
and religious leaders (as Saddam Hussein did), to get them to help us get
through this difficult period,” one option reads. The list of favored options
notably does not mention the “clear, hold and build” approach that the White
House has touted as its strategy for waging counterinsurgency. That is a
troop-intensive approach that calls for clearing contested areas with
American and Iraqi troops, holding them with American and Iraqi forces and
then carrying out reconstruction programs to win support. Nor does the list
make the withdrawal of American forces explicitly contingent on improving conditions
in Iraq. The final page of the memo
is a brief list of six “less attractive” options, which Mr. Rumsfeld
describes as “below the line.” They include an “aggressive federalism plan,”
an international conference modeled on the Dayton accords that produced an
agreement on Bosnia and an idea that is currently being seriously discussed
by senior administration officials: temporarily sending 20,000 additional
American forces or more to Baghdad to try to improve security there and
regain momentum. Moving a large fraction of
American forces to Baghdad to “attempt to control it,” Mr. Rumsfeld writes
without further elaboration, would be “below the line.” Defense Official to Resign Washington, Dec. 2 (Agence
France-Presse) - The Defense Department’s top intelligence official will
resign at the end of the year, the Pentagon has announced. Stephen A. Cambone, under
secretary of defense for intelligence, is the most senior Pentagon official
to announce he is leaving since Mr. Rumsfeld tendered his resignation last
month. Mr. Cambone is one of the last members of the original team that came to
the Pentagon with Mr. Rumsfeld in January 2001. Mr. Cambone has been a key
player in Mr. Rumsfeld’s efforts to transform the military into a lighter,
high-tech force, and in carving out a larger role for American military
intelligence. The Defense Department
expanded espionage and other covert intelligence gathering activities under
Mr. Cambone, drawing criticism from some members of Congress that the
department was intruding on turf traditionally dominated by the C.I.A. James Glanz contributed
reporting from Baghdad. Copyright 2006 The New York
Times Company External link: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/03/world/middleeast/03military.html Rumsfeld’s
Memo of Options for Iraq War Following
is the text of a classified Nov. 6 memorandum that Defense Secretary Donald
H. Rumsfeld sent to the White House suggesting new options in Iraq. The
memorandum was sent one day before the midterm Congressional elections and
two days before Mr. Rumsfeld resigned. Nov.
6, 2006 Subject: Iraq - Illustrative New Courses of
Action The
situation in Iraq has been evolving, and U.S. forces have adjusted, over
time, from major combat operations to counterterrorism, to counterinsurgency,
to dealing with death squads and sectarian violence. In my view it is time
for a major adjustment. Clearly, what U.S. forces are currently doing in Iraq
is not working well enough or fast enough. Following is a range of options: Illustrative Options Above
the Line: (Many of these options could and, in a number of cases, should be
done in combination with others) -
Publicly announce a set of benchmarks agreed to by the Iraqi Government and
the U.S. - political, economic and security goals - to chart a path ahead for
the Iraqi government and Iraqi people (to get them moving) and for the U.S.
public (to reassure them that progress can and is being made). -
Significantly increase U.S. trainers and embeds, and transfer more U.S.
equipment to Iraqi Security forces (ISF), to further accelerate their
capabilities by refocusing the assignment of some significant portion of the U.S.
troops currently in Iraq. -
Initiate a reverse embeds program, like the Korean Katusas, by putting one or
more Iraqi soldiers with every U.S. and possibly Coalition squad, to improve
our units’ language capabilities and cultural awareness and to give the
Iraqis experience and training with professional U.S. troops. -
Aggressively beef up the Iraqi MOD and MOI, and other Iraqi ministries critical
to the success of the ISF - the Iraqi Ministries of Finance, Planning,
Health, Criminal Justice, Prisons, etc. - by reaching out to U.S. military
retirees and Reserve/National Guard volunteers (i.e., give up on trying to
get other USG Departments to do it.) -
Conduct an accelerated draw-down of U.S. bases. We have already reduced from
110 to 55 bases. Plan to get down to 10 to 15 bases by April 2007, and to 5
bases by July 2007. -
Retain high-end SOF capability and necessary support structure to target Al
Qaeda, death squads, and Iranians in Iraq, while drawing down all other
Coalition forces, except those necessary to provide certain key enablers for
the ISF. -
Initiate an approach where U.S. forces provide security only for those
provinces or cities that openly request U.S. help and that actively
cooperate, with the stipulation being that unless they cooperate fully, U.S.
forces would leave their province. -
Stop rewarding bad behavior, as was done in Fallujah when they pushed in
reconstruction funds, and start rewarding good behavior. Put our
reconstruction efforts in those parts of Iraq that are behaving, and invest
and create havens of opportunity to reward them for their good behavior. As
the old saying goes, “If you want more of something, reward it; if you want
less of something, penalize it.” No more reconstruction assistance in areas
where there is violence. -
Position substantial U.S. forces near the Iranian and Syrian borders to
reduce infiltration and, importantly, reduce Iranian influence on the Iraqi
Government. -
Withdraw U.S. forces from vulnerable positions - cities, patrolling, etc. -
and move U.S. forces to a Quick Reaction Force (QRF) status, operating from
within Iraq and Kuwait, to be available when Iraqi security forces need
assistance. -
Begin modest withdrawals of U.S. and Coalition forces (start “taking our hand
off the bicycle seat”), so Iraqis know they have to pull up their socks, step
up and take responsibility for their country. -
Provide money to key political and religious leaders (as Saddam Hussein did),
to get them to help us get through this difficult period. -
Initiate a massive program for unemployed youth. It would have to be run by
U.S. forces, since no other organization could do it. -
Announce that whatever new approach the U.S. decides on, the U.S. is doing so
on a trial basis. This will give us the ability to readjust and move to
another course, if necessary, and therefore not “lose.” -
Recast the U.S. military mission and the U.S. goals (how we talk about them)
- go minimalist. Below the Line (less attractive options): -
Continue on the current path. -
Move a large fraction of all U.S. Forces into Baghdad to attempt to control
it. -
Increase Brigade Combat Teams and U.S. forces in Iraq substantially. -
Set a firm withdrawal date to leave. Declare that with Saddam gone and Iraq a
sovereign nation, the Iraqi people can govern themselves. Tell Iran and Syria
to stay out. -
Assist in accelerating an aggressive federalism plan, moving towards three
separate states - Sunni, Shia, and Kurd. -
Try a Dayton-like process. External link: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/03/world/middleeast/03mtext.html |