Donald Rumsfeld Joins Cheney In Attacking Obama, Claiming “Bald Misstatement”

Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is claiming President Obama wasn’t accurate in claims he made during the West Point Afghanistan speech.  Rumsfeld statement says:

“In his speech to the nation last night, President Obama claimed that ‘Commanders in Afghanistan repeatedly asked for support to deal with the reemergence of the Taliban, but these reinforcements did not arrive.’ Such a bald misstatement, at least as it pertains to the period I served as Secretary of Defense, deserves a response.”

“I am not aware of a single request of that nature between 2001 and 2006. If any such requests occurred, ‘repeated’ or not, the White House should promptly make them public. The President’s assertion does a disservice to the truth and, in particular, to the thousands of men and women in uniform who have fought, served and sacrificed in Afghanistan.”

“In the interest of better understanding the President’s announcement last night, I suggest that the Congress review the President’s assertion in the forthcoming debate and determine exactly what requests were made, who made them, and where and why in the chain of command they were denied.”

Funny that Rumsfeld says, “I am not aware of a single request…” as opposed to, “I did not receive a single request…”  Rumsfeld then says there should be a “review” of  “what requests were made,” and “why…they were denied.”  Well, if there were requests of something as significant as a troop increase in a war the United States is fighting, one would presume the Secretary of Defense would be aware of it definitively.

Speaking of doing a disservice to the brave troops, it was Secretary Rumsfeld who, speaking at a town hall meeting with soldiers at Camp Buehring in Kuwait on Decembeer 8, 2004, who said, “As you know, you go to war with the Army you have. They’re not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time.”

Today, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs quipped, “You go to war with the defense secretary you have.” And General David McKiernan, who served as the top commander in Afghanistan before General McChrystal, says he was denied needed resources by the Bush administration.

“There was a saying when I got there: If you’re in Iraq and you need something, you ask for it,” McKiernan said in his first interview since being fired. “If you’re in Afghanistan and you need it, you figure out how to do without it.”

By late last summer, he decided to tell George W. Bush’s White House what he knew it did not want to hear: He needed 30,000 more troops. He wanted to send some to the country’s east to bolster other U.S. forces, and some to the south to assist overwhelmed British and Canadian units in Helmand and Kandahar provinces.

The Bush administration opted not to act on McKiernan’s request and instead set out to persuade NATO allies to contribute more troops.

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.