Rumsfeld Faces Congress

American Progress Action: August 3, 2006

At a press conference yesterday, Secretary Donald Rumsfeld explained that he declined to testify before the Senate Armed Services Committee about the status of the Iraq war this morning because my calendar was such that to do it...would have been difficult. Amidst a firestorm of criticism, Rumsfeld's schedule miraculously cleared up and, just a few hours later, he agreed to testify. It will be the first time Rumsfeld has testified publicly about the war before the committee since February 2006. Since that time, approximately 300 U.S. troops have died in Iraq, 2,530 U.S. troops have been wounded and well over 10,000 Iraq civilians have been killed. Insurgents have conducted an average of 620 attacks per week. In March, there were 7.8 hours of electricity per day in Baghdad (down from 16-24 hours before the war); last month there were 7.6 hours.

In March, Iraq produced 2.1 million barrels of crude oil per day (down from 2.5 million barrels per day before the war); last month it produced 2.2 million barrels per day. Last time Rumsfeld testified, there were 133,000 U.S. troops in Iraq; today there are 132,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and plans to raise that number to 135,000. Progressives in Congress have united around a plan for a phased redeployment of U.S. forces, which offers the best incentive for Iraqis to take over their country while allowing U.S. to refocus its resources on the global threat of terrorist networks. When Rumsfeld appears before the Senate today, he will have to explain why violence is spiraling out of control, reconstruction is stalled and U.S. troops are unable to "stand down." In short, he will have to explain why we should "stay the course" with an administration strategy that is failing.

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Rumsfeld claims Army today is 'vastly better off'

Despite the strains of the Iraq war, Rumsfeld said yesterday that "the Army today is vastly better than it was two, four, six or eight years ago." It's not true. As Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-CT) argued on Tuesday, the Army is "very much worse off" than it was in late 1999 "when the military said two of the 10 Army divisions were ranked at the lowest readiness level, C-4." According to a group of defense experts chaired by former Defense Secretary William Perry, "two-thirds of the Army's operating force, active and reserve, is now reporting in as unready, and...there is not a single non-deployed Army Brigade Combat Team in the United States that is ready to deploy."

Additionally, the top National Guard general said yesterday that "more than two-thirds of the Army National Guard's 34 brigades are not combat ready, mostly because of equipment shortages that will cost up to $21billion to correct." (An American Progress report published in April documents the Army's extensive equipment shortages.) Lt. Gen. H. Steven Blum told reporters, "I am further behind or in an even more dire situation than the active Army, but we both have the same symptoms, I just have a higher fever."

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Haditha killings put focus on overburdened U.S. Forces:

Last November, a group of U.S. Marines allegedly went on a five-hour "rampage" in Haditha, engaging in revenge shootings of several innocent Iraqis for the death of their fellow soldier. Fellow Marines who came to clean up the scene afterwards "found babies, women and children shot in the head and chest. An old man in a wheelchair had been shot nine times." An initial probe by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service leaked to reporters yesterday "supports allegations that American Marines deliberately shot 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha." (A second NCIS probe is investigating whether commanders in Iraq deliberately covered up the deaths.)

Rep. John Murtha (D-PA), a decorated 37-year Marine veteran and advocate of a responsible redeployment from Iraq, has repeatedly pointed to the Haditha killings as evidence of the extreme burden being placed on U.S. soldiers in Iraq. Likewise, retired Army Gen. John Batiste, who led the 1st Infantry Division in Iraq, says there is "a direct link between Haditha" and the "bad judgment [and] poor decisions of our secretary of defense back in late 2003 and 2004. ... We went in under-resourced, overcommitted, and the strain on the force is unbelievable." Janis Karpinski, "who was demoted from brigadier general to colonel for her role in Abu Ghraib," said that Rumsfeld and other senior officials have failed to learn "from the prisoner abuse scandal that U.S. troops are under excessive strain and stress, with inadequate guidance from their leaders."

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Administration stays the course, endangering troops and damaging public diplomacy

The events in Haditha are not isolated. Just yesterday, four U.S. Army soldiers accused of killing three Iraqi civilians during a raid in May testified that they received orders from superior officers "to kill all the military-age men they encountered." Yet the Bush administration refuses to shift course to ease the burden on U.S. forces. Last week, Rumsfeld "directed more than 2,500 U.S. troops who have spent the past year in Iraq to stay up to four months past their scheduled departure date, boosting the size of the U.S. force amid unrelenting violence in Baghdad. "The Bush administration continues to advance plans for special military tribunals that violate the Geneva Conventions and are opposed by military's top uniformed lawyers, who testified again yesterday that the current tribunal plans endanger U.S. forces serving around the world. Meanwhile, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, "who commanded detention operations at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and helped organize the interrogation process at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq," retired from the military on Monday. At his retirement ceremony, the Pentagon awarded him the Distinguished Service Medal, which is given for "exceptionally commendable service in a position of great responsibility."

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Handing over a second insurgency:

The Wall Street Journal reports that corruption that has plagued Iraq's reconstruction -- described by U.S. officials as the 'second insurgency' -- is worsening, complicating American reconstruction efforts and shattering public confidence in the Baghdad government." According to a recent audit by Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction Stuart Bowen, "Iraqi government estimates that corruption costs the country at least $4 billion a year." In the audit, Bowen "concludes that the Bush administration's overall handling of Iraq contracting -- from relying on no-bid contracts even when major fighting had ended, to failing to standardize contracting regulations to help prevent fraud -- was deeply flawed." Said Bowen, "The Iraqis are going to have to develop their own system." The audit comes as "the Bush administration continues to wind down its ambitious Iraq reconstruction program, which has spent tens of billions of dollars on rebuilding efforts that have largely failed to restore basic services such as water or electricity to prewar levels." Still, "More than 500 planned projects have not been started, and the United States lacks a coherent plan for transferring authority to Iraqi control."