Secretary Rumsfeld Remarks at the Eisenhower National Security Conference

Secretary Rumsfeld took the press to task for the way they’re covering the rebuilding of Iraq.

“In Iraq no force of Iraqi fighters could have toppled Saddam Hussein without significant numbers of Coalition forces, though in the North Special Operations Forces and Kurdish Peshmerga fighters not only tied down Saddam Hussein’s northern units but also captured Mosul and helped to unravel the northern front with dispatch. Even so, we did not flood the country with a half million U.S. troops we kept our footprint modest liberating Iraq with something slightly over 100,000 forces in the country and when major combat ended we began working immediately to enlist Iraqis to take responsibility for governance and security of their own country and we’ve made solid progress. Within two months all major Iraqi cities and most towns had municipal councils, this something that took 8 months to accomplish in post-war Germany and I should add that a great many of those councils — representative councils were encouraged by the Army Forces and the Marine Forces on the ground in that country and the Coalition Forces through their fine work. Within 4 months the Iraqi Governing Council had been appointed and a cabinet had been named something that took 14 months in post-war Germany, in just two months an independent Iraqi central bank was established and a new currency announced, accomplishments that took 3 years in post-war Germany. Within three months we have begun training a new Iraqi Army and within two months a new Iraqi police force was conducting joint patrols with Coalition forces. By contrast it took 14 months to establish a police in Germany and 10 years to begin training a German Army, all this and more has taken place in Iraq in less than 5 months. I know of no comparable experience in history whether post-war Germany, post-war Japan, Kosovo and Bosnia I know of no example where things have moved as rapidly.“

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