Rumsfeld Singled Out
as Crisis Deepens in Iraq
By Julian
Borger
and Jonathan Steele
The Guardian UK
Posted by Bulatlat
Defence chief
attacked on war's third anniversary. Ex-PM Allawi says conflict is
tantamount to civil war.
A former US army
general yesterday called for Donald Rumsfeld to resign on grounds of
incompetence in Iraq, hours after Ayad Allawi, the former US-backed Iraqi
prime minister, declared the country to be in the thick of a civil war
that could soon "reach the point of no return".
Three years after
Iraq was invaded, statistics published yesterday show that the frequency
of insurgent bombings and group killings is growing, but both Mr Rumsfeld,
the defence secretary, and George Bush have vowed to fight on.
"Turning our backs on
postwar Iraq today would be the modern equivalent of handing postwar
Germany back to the Nazis," the defence secretary wrote in a Washington
Post commentary, as the administration tried to quell growing concern that
the conflict was unravelling beyond Washington's control.
President Bush made a
brief appearance on the White House lawn to say he was "encouraged" by
progress on forming a unity government in Iraq. But he had no other good
news to mark three years of a war in which more than 2,300 Americans have
died, and which has so far cost $500bn (nearly £290bn).
The US commander in
Iraq, General George Casey, said that the troop withdrawals he had
forecast for this spring or summer might have to wait until the end of the
year or even 2007. And Paul Eaton, a former American army general in
charge of training Iraqi forces until 2004, marked the anniversary with a
furious attack on Mr Rumsfeld, saying he was "not competent to lead our
armed forces".
In London, Mr Allawi
told BBC 2's Sunday AM programme: "We are losing each day, as an average,
50 to 60 people throughout the country, if not more. If this is not civil
war, then God knows what civil war is."
Britain's defence
secretary, John Reid, rejected that assessment. In Baghdad's green zone,
he said that most of Iraq was under control: "There is not civil war now,
nor is it inevitable, nor is it imminent".
In Washington, the US
vice-president, Dick Cheney, also appeared on television to play down
ideas of civil war. He told the CBS programme Face the Nation that the
surge in attacks aimed at fomenting sectarian conflict simply reflected
the insurgents' "state of desperation".
The remark echoed a
similarly optimistic phrase used by Mr Cheney in March last year, when he
claimed the insurgency was in its "last throes". Yesterday, he maintained
that that description was still "basically accurate".
There were signs
yesterday that the Bush administration was losing its ability to shape
perception of the conflict, even among partisan Republicans. George Will,
an influential conservative commentator, yesterday compared Iraq's war to
that of the 1930s Spanish civil war.
Mr Allawi now heads a
list of secular parties that had hoped to broker a compromise between the
Shia and Sunni parties. He warned that if Iraq reached the point of no
return it would "not only fall apart, but sectarianism would spread
through the region". He said even Europe and the US would "not be spared
all the violence" linked to sectarian problems.
There were no public
gatherings in Baghdad yesterday. People continued to race to work and back
home, fearing explosions, kidnapping or murder.
Iraqi police reported
that US troops had killed eight people, after a patrol was ambushed in the
Sunni town of Duluiya, north of Baghdad, early yesterday. The victims
included a 13-year-old boy and his parents, who were shot dead.
According to figures
compiled by the Brookings Institution, in Washington, there were 75
attacks a day last month, compared with 54 on average a year earlier. The
number of Iraqi civilians being killed in the conflict rose to 1,000 in
February, from 750 in February 2005. There are now 232,000 Iraqi security
personnel, up 90,000 over the past 12 months, but their ability to control
the situation is a matter of dispute. Oil production, the mainstay of the
economy, is in decline.
The Islamist parties
have failed to agree on a national unity government and sectarian violence
has markedly increased.
Last July Gen Casey
predicted that if the political process went well there could be "fairly
substantial reductions" in US troops in Iraq this spring or summer.
Yesterday, calling on
the US to keep its nerve, Mr Rumsfeld pointed to the swelling ranks of
Iraqi government forces. But Mr Eaton, a former major general, said the
defence secretary had "shown himself incompetent strategically,
operationally and tactically", and was "far more than anyone else,
responsible for what has happened to our important mission in Iraq". Mr
Rumsfeld had to step down, he said.
Backstory
Since the invasion of
Iraq three years ago, the US military has lost more than 2,300 troops in
combat, roadside explosions, insurgent attacks and friendly fire. But that
figure is dwarfed by estimates for the number of Iraqis killed, which
range from a conservative 30,000 to a more speculative 100,000. As many as
50 people are killed every day. Britain has lost 103 soldiers in Iraq,
while other nations together have lost 94 troops. But the cost of war has
not just been measured in human terms. There is the financial cost. The US
is still spending $6bn (£3.5bn) a month in Iraq, primarily on the 130,000
troops it still maintains in the country.
20 March 2006
Posted by
Bulatlat
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