24 December 2004
Defense Secretary Rumsfeld Travels to Four Iraqi Cities
(Trip includes meetings with Iraqi president, U.S. troops)
Washington -- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld traveled to Iraq December 24 to visit with U.S. soldiers and to thank them for their service far from home during the holidays and to stress the importance of their mission.
"The task you have is not to create a country, but to create an environment so that they [the Iraqis] can do it on their own," Rumsfeld said during an unannounced Christmas Eve trip to four Iraqi locations.
Rumsfeld stopped first in Mosul where a suicide bomber created havoc in an attack inside a U.S. military compound on December 21. The secretary visited wounded soldiers as Army Brigadier General Richard Formica investigated how the bomber gained access to a camp mess tent and detonated explosives which killed 22 U.S. and Iraqi soldiers and contractors. Jaish Ansar al-Sunna claimed responsibility for the attack and has acknowledged previously killing Turkish and Nepalese citizens in Iraq.
Rumsfeld next traveled south to Tikrit -- once the stronghold of the clan of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. -- where he talked to American soldiers about the importance of Iraq's upcoming January 30 elections and thanked them for their efforts to make Iraq secure.
Later in Fallujah, the scene of the most recent fiercest fighting between coalition forces and insurgents, Rumsfeld told troops that "What you're doing is enormously important." Iraq, he said, cannot be turned over to those individuals who would only "turn this country back to darkness."
In Baghdad Rumsfeld met with Iraqi President Ghazi al-Yawar and visited with additional wounded soldiers. He also was briefed by military commanders about plans to increase the number of U.S. forces in Iraq by 30,000 and the ongoing progress of training and equipping Iraqi forces.
Photos of the secretary's trip to Iraq are available on the Internet at: http://jccc.afis.osd.mil/images/news_images.pl?Lbox=defenselink.Secretary_Rumsfeld_Holiday_Visit_to_Iraq&ban=3
A U.S. Central Command news release on Rumsfeld's trip may be viewed at
http://www.centcom.mil/CENTCOMNews/news_release.asp?NewsRelease=20041251.txt
Both Rumsfeld and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Air Force General Richard Myers extended holiday greetings to the troops. Their messages are posted at:
http://www.dod.mil/news/Dec2004/n12202004_2004122002.html
http://www.dod.mil/news/Dec2004/n12202004_2004122007.html
President Bush also telephoned 10 soldiers serving in Iraq and other locations from Camp David on December 24.
A video message to the troops by the President and First Lady may be viewed at on the Pentagon Channel at http://pentagonchannel.feedroom.com/iframeset.jsp?ord=645955
(Distributed by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
This page printed from: http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/display.html?p=washfile-english&y=2004&m=December&x=20041224155020sjhtrop0.3276989&t=livefeeds/wf-latest.html
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