27 June 2005
Defense Department Report: Iraqis Will Defeat Insurgency, Rumsfeld Says
Defense secretary says Iraqi people demonstrate will, capacity to succeed
U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld stated in clear terms his belief that it is up to the Iraqi people themselves to defeat the insurgents in their country and that they are equal to the task.
Briefing journalists at the Pentagon along with Army General George Casey June 27, Rumsfeld said Iraqis "are in the earliest days" of building a democracy. Ultimately, he said, the Iraqis themselves will need to rebuild Iraq and make it secure. The job of the U.S-led coalition forces is to "create an environment where the Iraqis themselves can contain and ultimately defeat their insurgency," he said.
Rumsfeld said the Iraqi people have both the will and the capacity to succeed. Their national assets include petroleum, water, an intelligent and well-educated population and a heritage of a great civilization, he said.
The idea, Rumsfeld said, that the United States is in a quagmire or is losing in Iraq is "not so." Over the past year, he said, an elected government has been installed after a national vote by over 8 million Iraqis. The Sunnis who boycotted the election realize they made a mistake and are now "rejoining the political process," he said.
Iraqi security forces, the secretary said, "have grown steadily in size and capability." They have experience and equipment they lacked before, and are gaining the confidence of their fellow Iraqis.
On the other hand, Rumsfeld said, the insurgents can still pull off "savage attacks," but they have lost sanctuaries like Fallujah. Their main achievement, he said, is a growing body count of mainly Iraqi civilians and "a skillful knack for grabbing headlines -- free publicity worth millions to their violent cause."
Casey, commander of all U.S. forces in Iraq, offered a report card on the failures of the insurgency:
-- Their base of support has not expanded;
-- They have not attracted a broad following, "largely because they offer no positive vision for the future of Iraq;"
-- They have not prevented the growth of Iraqi security forces;
-- They have lost their Fallujah safe haven, and have not been able to gain another;
-- They have also not sparked sectarian violence, in spite of daily effort; and
-- They have not stopped Iraqi political and economic development.
"Iraq slowly gets better every day," Casey said. Nonetheless, he added, we can expect that "Iraq's steady progress will be contested."
Rumsfeld also said that the insurgency is not a nationalist movement, does not have a vision for Iraq, and will eventually lose.
"One thing I do believe very deeply … I honestly believe that this insurgency is going to be defeated by the Iraqi people and not by coalition countries and not by the United States, and that our task is to give them, the Iraqi peoples an environment within which they can do that," Rumsfeld said.
(Distributed by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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