whoa!!!! Rumsfeld Urged Major Changes in Iraq and then was sacked [View All]

Rumsfeld Urged Major Changes in Iraq

By ROBERT BURNS
AP Military Writer

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_IRAQ?SITE=CATOR&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2006-12-02-19-29-08


WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush said Saturday he wants to hear all advice before making decisions about changes in Iraq strategy, even as it was disclosed that Donald H. Rumsfeld called for major changes in tactics two days before he resigned as defense secretary.
"In my view it is time for a major adjustment," Rumsfeld wrote in a Nov. 6 memo to the White House. "Clearly, what U.S. forces are currently doing in Iraq is not working well enough or fast enough."
Existence of the classified memo was first reported by The New York Times on its Internet site Saturday evening in a story for the paper's Sunday editions.

Pentagon press secretary Eric Ruff said he was not the source of the leak to the Times, but confirmed the memo's authenticity to The Associated Press late Saturday. "The formulation of these ideas evolved over a period of several weeks," Ruff said in a telephone interview.

He said the options presented in the paper were Rumsfeld's personal ideas developed in conversations with a variety of people, not part of a formal Pentagon review that also is under way.