Thread: Rumsfeld says Iraq insurgency may last for years.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/26/po...nd-policy.html


Rumsfeld Speaks Cautiously on Strength of Insurgency

By BRIAN KNOWLTON
International Herald Tribune
Published: June 26, 2005
WASHINGTON, June 26 - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld insisted today that United States-led forces were making significant progress in Iraq, but he spoke with deliberate caution about how long and forcefully insurgents were likely to resist and noted that such resistance movements can last a dozen years.

"The insurgency will be put down by the Iraqi people over time," Mr. Rumsfeld said on "Fox News Sunday." "It won't be won by the coalition forces."[ He added that "insurgencies tend to go on 5, 6, 8, 10, 12 years." And violence, he said, might increase ahead of national elections set for December.

But Mr. Rumsfeld expressed nothing but certainty about the final outcome: The insurgents, he said, were "losers, and they're going to lose."

Mr. Rumsfeld's appearances on three television programs, and the appearances of Gen. John Abizaid, the military commander responsible for Afghanistan and Iraq, on two other programs seemed intended to lay the groundwork for a major prime-time speech on Tuesday by President Bush. Both Mr. Rumsfeld and General Abizaid sought to sound reassuring tones, while preparing the public for a long and difficult struggle.

Some in Congress have sharpened their criticism of the war and called for the administration to outline a clear strategy for withdrawal. In one exchange last week, Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts suggested to Mr. Rumsfeld, and not for the first time, that he resign. Meanwhile, opinion polls show public confidence in the war at all-time lows.

Mr. Bush said Friday that he was "not giving up on the mission." He is expected to ask Americans for patience and forbearance.

General Abizaid expressed calm confidence today about the war but cautioned against hoping for short-term results.

"There's no way the United States military in either Iraq or Afghanistan is going to be pushed into the sea," he said on the CBS News program "Face the Nation." "The insurgents don't have a chance."

He said that Iraqi forces could begin taking a lead role by next spring or summer, but that reductions in American forces would probably not come for a year after that.

"We don't kneed to have the same number of troops in the region 10 years from now or 5 years from now or even 2 years from now," said General Abizaid, who heads the United States Central Command.

Mr. Rumsfeld, expressing similar confidence, characterized the insurgents as outsiders with scant domestic support.

Unlike past revolutions in Vietnam and China, he said, there was no charismatic national leader. "There is no Ho Chi Minh or Mao there," he said. "There's a Jordanian terrorist who's killing Iraqi people," a reference to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who is considered a leader of the insurgency.

Moreover, Mr. Rumsfeld said, the insurgents' ability to kill large numbers of people was a poor indicator of Iraqi support for their cause.

"It doesn't take a genius to go blow up a restaurant," he said on Fox. "A kid with a suicide vest can kill a lot of people."

He described overall progress in Iraq as "solid," adding: "It's amazing. It's historic."

Mr. Rumsfeld was asked to square a comment last week by Vice President Dick Cheney, who said that the insurgency was in its "last throes," with General Abizaid's testimony on Thursday to Congress that the insurgency's "overall strength is about the same" as six months earlier and that the flow of anti-American fighters into the country had grown.

Mr. Rumsfeld, noting that the word "throes" can encompass violent spasms, said that there was "no contradiction at all" between Mr. Cheney's and General Abizaid's comments.

Mr. Rumsfeld was also asked about the accusations of abuse of detainees at the United States base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. He categorically denied that there was "any policy of abuse or policy of torture."

"There have been, I believe, 50 convictions of people for not obeying the rules that have been established," he said on Fox News. "The prisoners in Guantánamo Bay are being treated humanely.

"The idea that there's any policy of abuse or policy of torture is false, flat false."


Mr. Rumsfeld also confirmed, but played down, a British press report that American officials had negotiated recently with Iraqi insurgents in two meetings in a villa north of Baghdad.

"Sure, my goodness, yeah," Mr. Rumsfeld said of a report about the meetings in The Sunday Times of London. "The first thing you want to do is split people off and get some people to be supportive. The same thing's going on in Afghanistan."

But he added, "I would not make a big deal out of it."

Both Mr. Rumsfeld and General Abizaid suggested that the meetings were intended largely to improve contacts with Sunni Muslims in central Iraq - where the insurgency has proved most intractable - to urge them to play a larger role in the political process.

But this, General Abizaid said on CBS, "doesn't mean we're talking to people like Zarqawi."

Such meetings were reported early this year by Time magazine.