Statement by U.S. Senator Mark Dayton on Democrats' "No Confidence" in Secretary Rumsfeld
STATEMENT BY U.S. SENATOR MARK DAYTON ON DEMOCRATS' "NO CONFIDENCE" IN SECRETARY RUMSFELD
U.S. Senator Mark Dayton today made the following statement on the Senate floor. I join today with many of my colleagues in expressing "no confidence" in Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, and urging President Bush to replace him.
I respect the Secretary's commitment to public service and I recognize that he has one of the most difficult jobs hereor anywhere in the world.
He's a stand-up, tell-it-as-he-sees-it man, the kind we need more of in Washington.
Unfortunately, the way he sees it has too often been wrong.
The disastrous failures in prosecuting the war in Iraq have left our courageous American troops mired in a quagmire there with no end in sight.
And his shameful rhetoric last week comparing critics of his failed policies to the appeasers of Hilter was clearly a desperate attempt to divert attention away from his own failures.
Recent polls show the number of Americans who support the Administration's policies in Iraq is down to 39 percent compared to a high of 76 percent in April 2003.
That loss of public confidence has occurred not because Americans are appeasers, they most certainly are not; not because American don't support our troops, because they most certainly do support and respect their incredible courage and patriotism, as they persevere in the awful, devastating conditions there.
That loss of public confidence in the Bush Administration's war effort has occurred, because Americans can tell the difference between success and failure. They can see that the President's policies are not succeeding in Iraq, that the Iraqi government and Iraqi people are not winning against their own countrymen who oppose them. And that conditions in Iraq are getting still worse - not better.
All the Administration's wrong rhetoric won't change their wrong plans, policies, and practices that have created this mess.
Shortly before the invasion of Iraq, then Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee that at least twice the number of U.S. troops the Secretary was planning to commit to Iraq would be needed to secure the country after Saddam Hussein's overthrow.
For his foresight and his candor he was sacked by the Secretary, who preferred to believe the Administration's favorite Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi that the country would go back to work the day after Saddam Hussein's regime was toppled.
So, when widespread looting and disorder occurred, instead, the Secretary dismissed its significance. We now know that General Shinseki was right. Bush, Rumsfeld and Chalabi were wrong.
And that the initial civil disorder was a warning of much worse upheavals ahead, for which the Bush Administration and its appointed Iraqi administrators were completely unprepared.
Even more tragically, they remain unprepared even today. Incredible violence, widespread corruption, nonexistent public services, failed improvement projects, delays, failures and finger-pointing - those are the miseries that Iraqi citizens must endure today.
Democracy is a great thing. But democracy as we know means life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Most Iraqis today fear for their lives. More and more are losing them and reportedly almost a million Iraqi citizens have fled their country.
Liberty requires basic security, which the Bush Administration and the Iraqi government are failing to provide. And the chance to pursue happiness for many Iraqis is tragically even less possible than to was under Saddam Hussein.
This is the disaster for which over 2,650 heroic American soldiers have given their lives, almost 20,000 have given their bodies - and for which Secretary Rumsfeld must accept responsibility, but won't.
Instead, what we are getting is another round of overheated and misleading rhetoric from the Secretary, the Vice President and the President.
Last week was a repeat of some of the 2002 Conventions, where they first trotted out their overheated and misleading rhetoric to stampede Congress into supporting the Iraq War Resolution.
Saddam Hussein and his supposed weapons of mass destruction were urgent threats to our citizens' safety.
The Secretary of Defense, the Vice President, and the President all claimed proof positive that Saddam Hussein was developing nuclear weapons that would soon - if not already - present mortal danger to our national security.
Critics, skeptics, and even questioners were derided and dismissed as being appeasers of the then-Hitlerian menace, Saddam Hussein.
That Administration offensive succeeded in persuading a majority of Congress and the American people. I was one of only 23 Members of the Senate to vote against the Iraq War Resolution in October, 2002.
And even with bipartisan support for their War Resolution, the President and others still used it politically to try to defeat Democrats in the 2002 midterm elections.
Just as they are now trying to do in this year's midterm elections.
Once again, their rhetoric is misleading at best, and blatantly wrong at worst.
Just yesterday, the President responded his claim that Iraq is the central battlefield where the war against terrorism will be decided.
There is no question that we must win the War in Iraq - because we started that war - and once you're into it, you must win it, or suffer serious consequences.
But the worsening violence in Iraq - which the Bush Administration and the Iraqi government - are failing to control or contain - is by all rational accounts - primarily and mostly Iraqi-against-Iraqi sectarian violence.
And to the extent that Al Qaeda or other terrorist organizations are operating in Iraq - it is because of the opening and opportunities President Bush has provided them by creating a leaderless and lawless state.
Al Qaeda as we have just witnessed is not using Iraq as its central battlefield but rather Heathrow Airport or bombings in Spain, Japan and Egypt.
Osama bin Laden is, by all accounts, not masterminding his next assailed against the U.S. from Pakistan or Afghanistan, where the Al Qaeda-allied Taliban is now resurgent due to the other failed Bush Administration policies including their track and disastrous failures to meaningfully help rebuild that country.
Five years after 9/11, Osama bin Laden is still alive, unscathed and plotting against the U.S. because the Bush Administration has failed to devote the military personnel, resources and the diplomatic efforts necessary to find him and eliminate him.
Given the Administration's attempts to exploit next Monday's fifth anniversary of 9/11 to its political benefit, it is a disgrace to the Americans Osama bin Laden murdered and to their families that this terrible criminal remains alive and free to operate against us.
Let me conclude with excerpts from public statements made recently by two U.S. generals with first hand experience of the situation in Iraq.
John Batiste is a retiree Army Major General who commanded the 1st U.S. Infantry Division in Iraq.
I had the opportunity to observe high-level policy formulation in the Pentagon and experience firsthand its impact on the ground. I have concluded that we need new leadership in the Defense Department because of a pattern of poor strategic decisions and a leadership style that is contemptuous, dismissive, arrogant and abusive.
We went to war with the wrong war plan. Senior civilian leadership chose to radically alter the results of 12 years of deliberate and continuous war planning, which was improved and approved, year after year, by previous secretaries of defense, all supported by their associated chairmen and Joint Chiefs of Staffs. Previous planning identified the need for up to three times the troop strength we committed to remove the regime in Iraq and set the conditions for peace there.
Our current leadership decided to discount professional military advice and ignore more than a decade of competent military planning We took down a regime but failed to provide the resources to build the peace. The shortage of troops never allowed commanders on the ground to deal properly with the insurgency and the unexpected. What could have been a deliberate victory is now a long, protracted challenge.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld claims to be the man who started the Army's transformation. This is not true. Army transformation started years before this administration came into office. The secretary's definition of transformation was to reduce the Army to between five and seven divisions to fund programs in missile defense, space defense and high-tech weapons the Army remains under-resourced at a time when it is shouldering most of the war effort.
Civilian control of the military is fundamental, but we deserve competent leaders who do not lead by intimidation, who understand that respect is a two-way street, and who do not dismiss sound military advice. At the same time, we need senior military leaders who are grounded in the fundamental principles of war and who are not afraid to do the right thing. Our democracy depends on it. There are some who advocate that we gag this debate, but let me assure you that it is not in our national interest to do so. We must win this war, and we cannot allow senior leaders to continue to make decisions when their track record is so dismal.
["A Case for Accountability" by John Batiste, Washington Post, April 19, 2006 ]
Retired Marine Lt. General Greg Newbold: Time April 9, 2006: From 2000 until October 2002, I was a Marine Corps lieutenant general and director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff Inside the military family, I made no secret of my view that the zealots' rationale for war made no sense. And I think I was outspoken enough to make those senior to me uncomfortable. But I now regret that I did not more openly challenge those who were determined to invade a country whose actions were peripheral to the real threat--al-Qaeda.
In those places, I have been both inspired and shaken by the broken bodies but unbroken spirits of soldiers, Marines and corpsmen returning from this war. The cost of flawed leadership continues to be paid in blood.
For that reason, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's recent statement that "we" made the "right strategic decisions" but made thousands of "tactical errors" is an outrage. It reflects an effort to obscure gross errors in strategy by shifting the blame for failure to those who have been resolute in fighting. The truth is, our forces are successful in spite of the strategic guidance they receive, not because of it.
What we are living with now is the consequences of successive policy failures. Some of the missteps include: the distortion of intelligence in the buildup to the war, McNamara-like micromanagement that kept our forces from having enough resources to do the job, the failure to retain and reconstitute the Iraqi military in time to help quell civil disorder, the initial denial that an insurgency was the heart of the opposition to occupation, alienation of allies who could have helped in a more robust way to rebuild Iraq, and the continuing failure of the other agencies of our government to commit assets to the same degree as the Defense Department. My sincere view is that the commitment of our forces to this fight was done with a casualness and swagger that are the special province of those who have never had to execute these missions--or bury the results.
The consequence was that a fundamentally flawed plan was executed for an invented war, while pursuing the real enemy, al-Qaeda, became a secondary effort.
So what is to be done? We need fresh ideas and fresh faces. That means, as a first step, replacing Rumsfeld and many others unwilling to fundamentally change their approach. The troops in the Middle East have performed their duty. Now we need people in Washington who can construct a unified strategy worthy of them. It is time to send a signal to our nation, our forces and the world that we are uncompromising on our security but are prepared to rethink how we achieve it. ["Why Iraq Was a Mistake" by Lieut. General Greg Newbold, Time magazine, April 9, 2006 ]
This debate is long overdue on the Senate floor and I thank our Democratic Leader for it.
This debate is about how to finally win in Iraq, how to bring our courageous troops home as safely and as soon as possible with their victory secured by the Iraqi government, the Iraqi military and police, and the Iraqi people.
Our heroic soldiers deserve better than the President's apologists again defending the failures of the past and the continuing failures of the present. They deserve a new strategy to win victory and a new leader to achieve it.
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