Rumsfeld voices doubt about 'war on terror' progress

By ANDREW BUNCOMBE in WASHINGTON

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has expressed significant doubts about America's progress in the so-called war on terror, saying the country is in for a "long, hard slog" in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

In an internal memo to senior Pentagon officials, Mr Rumsfeld cited "mixed results" in the fight against al-Qaeda and said the US has failed to make any "truly bold moves". He went on to say that it has proved impossible to transform the Pentagon quickly enough to become efficient at dealing with the challenge of taking on terrorists rather than a conventional enemy.

"My impression is that we have not yet made truly bold moves, although we have made many sensible, logical moves in the right direction, but are they enough?" he wrote in the memo, dated October 16.

"It is pretty clear that the coalition can win in Afghanistan and Iraq in one way or another, but it will be a long, hard slog."

Mr Rumsfeld's comments present a far more stark assessment of the US's progress in both Iraq and in dealing with al-Qaeda than he makes in his public comments. They are also at odds with the "positive news" campaign that President Bush and his senior officials have been carrying out in recent weeks in an effort to try and persuade the public that progress is being made in Iraq.

In the memo circulated to his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, General Dick Meyers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Meyer's deputy General Peter Pace and Douglas Feith the undersecretary of defence for policy, Mr Rumsfeld asked whether the US was "winning or losing the global war on terror".

In note form, he wrote: "We are having mixed results with al-Qaeda, although we have put considerable pressure on them - nonetheless, a great many remain at large. USG (United States Government) has made reasonable progress in capturing or killing the top 55 Iraqis. USG has made somewhat slower progress tracking down the Taleban - (Taleban leader, Mullah) Omar, etc. With respect to the Ansar Al-Islam, we are just getting started."

He also said it was impossible to know whether the US was having more success in countering terrorists than they were in recruiting new members.

"Today, we lack metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror," he wrote. "Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?"

He added: "Is our current situation such that the harder we work the behinder we get?"

In recent weeks President Bush has been trying to emphasise positive developments in Iraq and blaming the media for "filtering out" good news and focussing only on things that have been going badly.

Yesterday, travelling with the President in Australia, his spokesman declined to comment directly on the memo, obtained by the USA Today newspaper.

But speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Canberra, Mr Bush said: "I've always felt that there's a tendency of people to kind of seek a comfort zone and hope that the war on terror is over. And I view it as a responsibility of the United States to remind people of our mutual obligations to deal with the terrorists."

Mr Rumsfeld's spokesman, Larry Di Rita, said yesterday that the memo was meant to raise "big questions that deserve big thinking" and preserve a "constant sense of urgency".

He said the memo was one of a series of deliberately provocative questions that Mr Rumsfeld regularly presented to senior Pentagon staff. Three members of Congress who met Mr Rumsfeld yesterday said they had been given copies of the memo and discussed it with them. "He's asking the tough questions we all need to be asking," said Democrat Jim Turner.

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