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Rumsfeld Stays On, Hopes Troops Quit Iraq in 4 Years
Didn't Bush blast Kerry for saying the same thing?
KUWAIT (Reuters) - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Monday he had agreed to stay in his job and hoped U.S. troops would be pulled out of Iraq (news - web sites) during the Bush administration's second four-year term.
Reuters Photo
"I would certainly expect that would be the case, and hope that would be the case," Rumsfeld told reporters traveling with him, when asked if U.S. troops would be pulled out of Iraq in the next term.
But he said that he did not want to make predictions of when American troops would leave. "The president has said they will stay as long as they are needed, not a day longer," he added.
Rumsfeld stopped in Kuwait on his way to attend the presidential inauguration of Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan (news - web sites) on Tuesday, which will be followed by a stop in India.
Rumsfeld made his first comments about staying in his post in the second term of President Bush (news - web sites).
"The election's over and the president asked me if I would be willing to stay on and I told him I would be delighted to do that," Rumsfeld said.
"I enjoy working with him, he is a good leader, he is an excellent executive, and second we have a lot of tough challenges for our country and the department of defense is a part of that," Rumsfeld said.
"I feel fortunate at this point in my life to feel I can contribute to working on these important problems," he said.
"We've got a lot of work that's well along but some of it is not finished," Rumsfeld said. "The task of moving an institution as large as the U.S. Department of Defense (news - web sites) is a sizeable task, and it's the kind of thing that doesn't happen instantaneously. Great bureaucracies don't spin on a dime."
Rumsfeld has been a proponent of transforming the U.S. military from a Cold War-era force into a more agile one capable of dealing with newer threats such as terrorism.
Asked about mistakes during the first term, Rumsfeld pointed to faulty intelligence before the Iraq war.
"The fact that one of the bases for going into Iraq which this administration articulated was the conviction that they had weapons of mass destruction which would be findable," Rumsfeld said. "So that is clearly a disappointment." But, he said: "There are many, many reasons to do what was done and the Iraqi people and the world is a vastly better place today with Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) and his crowd out."
He added: "But I don't think anyone would say that the intelligence left anyone with the impression that you'd be in the degree of insurgency you're in today and resistance on the part of a mixture of Baathists and pro-dictatorship, pro-Saddam people mixed in with some foreign terrorists and extremists."
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R.I.P Tim Minnick
The KING of Cards
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