27 March 2006
Rumsfeld Says Patience Needed To Roll Back Violence in Iraq
Defense secretary also pays tribute to September 11, 2001, heroes on Flight 93
Washington – Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld counseled those anxious to see an end to the U.S. presence in Iraq to exercise patience while Iraqi security forces become more experienced in quelling violence and defending their new government.
Many people live in an age of having their expectations met almost instantly, he said, but warned instant gratification cannot be applied to the duration of U.S. soldiers’ stay in Iraq. It takes time to produce seasoned, mature Iraqi security forces, the secretary said during a March 27 speech at the Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
A Jordanian colonel, attending a security seminar at the college, asked Rumsfeld if there was a limit to the time the United States would wait for the Iraqi security apparatus to be functioning fully.
The secretary, after thanking the colonel for Jordan’s “cooperation in so many different ways,” replied that conditions on the ground will determine the duration of U.S. deployment in Iraq.
Rumsfeld highlighted progress made by Iraqis as they build a new military and police force:
• Iraqi security forces are gaining in experience and becoming more effective in countering the insurgency;
• U.S. military forces increasingly are working in an advisory role and are embedded with their Iraqi counterparts, where they are ideally positioned to spot potential weaknesses and to make necessary adjustments;
• Thirty military facilities or bases already have been turned over by the coalition to Iraq; and
• 240,000 Iraqi forces are operating as special commandos and border patrol officers. (See related article.)
The Iraqi forces are making steady progress, Rumsfeld said, and, over time they will assume greater responsibility. Then, the secretary added, “we’ll be in a position to turn [all security operations] over to them and provide various types of enabling assistance for some period of time thereafter.”
FLIGHT 93 MEMORIAL
While in Pennsylvania, the secretary paid his respects to the victims of United Airlines Flight 93 who perished in Shanksville fighting the September 11, 2001, terrorists for control of their hijacked airliner. Rumsfeld paid tribute to the passengers who “gave their lives in extraordinary defiance of foreign hijackers and in defense of our country’s capital.”
More than 150,000 people from 34 countries visit the site annually. A multi-acre permanent Flight 93 National Memorial will be built in Somerset Country as a tribute to those who died there.
Meanwhile, local residents volunteer at a small temporary memorial where visitors leave flowers, letters and artwork to those whom Rumsfeld said probably never thought of themselves as either heroes or history makers when they boarded their flight bound for San Francisco that day.
Additional information on the memorial is available on the National Park Service Web site.
For more information about U.S. policy, see Response to Terrorism.
(Distributed by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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