Over at the Pentagon last Thursday (4/15/04), Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld breezed, blustered and bristled his way through a press briefing and offered these remarks about troop counts and the general situation in Iraq:

Q: And you’re fairly confident that after 90 days, you’ll be able to start drawing [troops] down to, say, 115,000, or you just don’t know?

SEC. RUMSFELD: You know me, I’m not going to set — it depends on the facts on the ground. We’ve said all along, from the very beginning, we’d use the level of forces that are necessary to prevail. That was true during the major combat operations, it’s been true during stabilization operations subsequently. And you can’t predict the future, you just simply cannot do that, so why bother? Why try?

And:

Q: I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but I want to make sure I understand what you’re saying. Are you conceding that you didn’t anticipate that the level of violence that’s going on in Iraq now, the level of the insurgency, the fact that you’re taking more casualties now than you were a year ago when you were still in major combat, are you conceding that you didn’t anticipate that?

SEC. RUMSFELD: I am saying that 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.

Rumsfeld’s dismissive, non-responsive, strategy-deficient comments are curious and infuriating, though hardly surprising. Remember, it was precisely a year ago when this same member of Bush’s Team Teflon? was just as contemptuous as he indignantly shrugged off international outrage and criticism about widespread looting and insecurity in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein.

While Chalabi and his merry band of mercenaries INC were scurrying off with Iraqi secret police and intelligence files, and as museums, ministries and munitions depots were being pillaged of anything and everything, Rumsfeld blamed the Chicken Little press and offered this incisive analysis:

Q: Do you think that the words “anarchy” and “lawlessness” are ill-chosen —

Rumsfeld: Absolutely. I picked up a newspaper today and I couldn’t believe it. I read eight headlines that talked about chaos, violence, unrest. And it just was Henny Penny — “The sky is falling.” I’ve never seen anything like it! And here is a country that’s being liberated, here are people who are going from being repressed and held under the thumb of a vicious dictator, and they’re free. And all this newspaper could do, with eight or 10 headlines, they showed a man bleeding, a civilian, who they claimed we had shot — one thing after another. It’s just unbelievable how people can take that away from what is happening in that country!

Q: Yes, but Mr. Secretary, I’m asking about what plan was there to restore law and order?

Rumsfeld: Well, let’s just take a city. Take the port city, Umm Qasr — what the plan was. Well, the British went in, they built a pipeline bringing water in from Kuwait; they cleared the mine of ports (sic); they brought ships in with food; they’ve been providing security. In fact, they’ve done such a lousy job, that the city has gone from 15,000 to 40,000. Now think of that. Why would people vote with their feet and go into this place that’s so bad? The reason they’re going in is because they’re food, there’s water, there’s medicine and there’s jobs. That’s why. The British have done a fantastic job. They’ve done an excellent job.

And, does that mean you couldn’t go in there and take a television camera or get a still photographer and take a picture of something that was imperfect, untidy? I could do that in any city in America. Think what’s happened in our cities when we’ve had riots, and problems, and looting. Stuff happens! But in terms of what’s going on in that country, it is a fundamental misunderstanding to see those images over, and over, and over again of some boy walking out with a vase and say, “Oh, my goodness, you didn’t have a plan.” That’s nonsense. They know what they’re doing, and they’re doing a terrific job. And it’s untidy, and freedom’s untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things. They’re also free to live their lives and do wonderful things, and that’s what’s going to happen here.

How does Rumsfeld get away with continually spewing this kind of lame crap, year in and year out? Isn’t it time he be held accountable for at least some of the glaring strategic and military mistakes that the Bush administration has made in Iraq?

Retired Marine General Anthony Zinni, who served for 39 years in the military and is a former chief of the U.S. Central Command, seems to think so. In an interview published Friday (4/16/04) in the San Diego Union-Tribune, Zinni had this to say about Rumsfeld’s comments the day before:

“I’m surprised that he is surprised because there was a lot of us who were telling him that it was going to be thus,” said Zinni, a Marine for 39 years and the former commander of the U.S. Central Command. “Anyone could know the problems they were going to see. How could they not?” …

“I think that some heads should roll over Iraq,” Zinni said. “I think the president got some bad advice.”

The article continues:

Out of uniform, Zinni was a troubleshooter for the U.S. government in Africa, Asia and Europe and served as special envoy to the Middle East under the Bush administration for a time before his reservations over the Iraq war and its aftermath caused him to resign and oppose it.

Not even Zinni’s resum? could shield him from the accusations that followed.

“I’ve been called a traitor and a turncoat for mentioning these things,” said Zinni, 60. The problems in Iraq are being caused, he said, by poor planning and shortsightedness, such as disbanding the Iraqi army and being unable to provide security.

Zinni said the United States must now rely on the U.N. to pull its “chestnuts out of the fire in Iraq.”

“We’re betting on the U.N., who we blew off and ridiculed during the run-up to the war,” Zinni said. “Now we’re back with hat in hand. It would be funny if not for the lives lost.”

Indeed.