American officials underestimated the strength of resistance in Iraq by Saddam Hussein supporters and have done other "stupid things" there, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said Wednesday.
The admission of mistakes by Wolfowitz was a departure from the Bush administration's efforts to put events in Iraq in a positive light.
"Some conditions were worse than we anticipated, particularly in the security area," said Wolfowitz, who returned Tuesday from a five-day tour of Iraq.
He named three: First, no Iraqi military units "of significant size" defected to the American side during the war.
"Second, the police turned out to require a massive overhaul," Wolfowitz said at a Pentagon news conference.
"Third, and worst of all," he said, was the underestimation of resistance.
It never ceases to amaze me that the Rethuglicans are able to pose as supporters of the troops.
The reThuglicans want to do everything on the cheap (except privatization), so they don't want to pay the troops what they're worth; the reThuglicans only put in a predictable rotation plan when the troops forced them to by talking to the media; the reThuglicans lied their way into the war they had to have, and for which every single national security justification1 has subsequently been proved false; and by doing "stupid things" they got the troops into a quagmire and had no plan to get them out. (We may have a plan now—my point exactly.) I could go on, but you get the point.
How again do the Republicans "support the troops"?
Ritual disclaimer and troll prophylactic
1Saddam is evil.