General reveals rift with Rumsfeld on insurgents

asiatimes: A military assessment of the Iraqi insurgency in late 2004 concluded that it had the active support of millions of Sunnis who rejected the legitimacy of a US installed government, according to Lt Gen John R Vines, who led all coalition forces in Iraq from January 2005 to January 2006.

That analysis conflicted with the view of Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney, who believed the insurgents represented only Saddam loyalists and foreign jihadis and could be defeated by a combination of force and free elections.

Vines' revelation thus provides the first serious evidence of past differences between the US command in Iraq and top US policymakers over the nature of the insurgency and what to do about it.

In a speech at the Washington Institute on Thursday, Gen Vines recalled that an analysis on which he worked in fall 2004 had portrayed a three-tier insurgency, the largest element of which consisted of "Sunnis who rejected the authority of the interim government".

Vines said this element, which was called "Sunni Arab rejectionists", included those Sunnis who "agreed that the transitional government could not be expected to protect their interests". It was "quite a large element", he said, numbering in the "millions". Read more