At a speech in W.Va. yesterday, former U.S. administrator in Iraq, Bremer, said essentially the same thing that John Kerry is saying. He said that the Iraq war was handled wrong by not sending enough troops in, and after we "won", we should have guarded more than just the oil refineries. Bremer said that by allowing the widespread looting and other lawlessness in the early stages of the occupation, we allowed the climate of lawlessness that exists today.
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"We paid a big price for not stopping it because it established an atmosphere of lawlessness," he said yesterday in a speech at an insurance conference in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va. "We never had enough troops on the ground."
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In a Sept. 17 speech at DePauw University, Bremer said he frequently raised the issue within the administration and "should have been even more insistent" when his advice was spurned because the situation in Iraq might be different today. "The single most important change -- the one thing that would have improved the situation -- would have been having more troops in Iraq at the beginning and throughout" the occupation, Bremer said, according to the Banner-Graphic in Greencastle, Ind
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Bremer remains a staunch Bush supporter, but I think it's pretty telling when Bush's people break ranks like this and make comments about the administration's failure to plan for the next step after winning the war in Iraq. You've been hearing from the Democrats that Bush invaded Iraq with no exit strategy or plan for winning the peace. Now you are hearing it from some Republicans too.