Reply #271: Rumsfeld at Sea

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At one point, Donald Rumsfeld is said to have become a little testy. It was October 10 and the U.S. Secretary of Defense had just landed on the deck of the USS John F. Kennedy aboard a C-2 Greyhound twin-engine propeller-driven cargo plane accompanied by 18 defense ministers from 18 "coalition partners" in the Iraq war. When someone from the accompanying media asked about the possibility of an increase in the number of U.S. troops fighting the insurgency there, he reportedly shot back, "There's a fixation on that subject! It's fascinating how everyone is locked on that." However, en route to the shipboard huddle Rumsfeld told U.S. commanders in Iraq that he may yet decide they need more U.S. troops over the next two months. He also complained about the inability to convince countries to send additional forces to provide security for an expanded U.N. presence in Baghdad.

According to the Associated Press, the session aboard the Kennedy convened "amid mounting concern in some quarters that the insurgency in Iraq is so widespread and violent that full and fair elections in January might not be able to go on as scheduled."

Troop strength was very much the subject of the gathering. The war is escalating and the secretary was looking for help.

It wasn't easy finding out which "Coalition" defense ministers met with Rumsfeld Oct. 10 in a windowless room in the bowels of the U.S. John F. Kennedy in the middle of the Arab Gulf. A number of the major media reports following the meeting gave the number -- 18 -- but didn't list them. They are: Albania, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Iraq, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Mongolia, Poland, Qatar, Romania, and Ukraine and Iraq. Nicaragua, Spain, Dominican Republic, Honduras, the Philippines, Thailand and New Zealand have already withdrawn their forces. For some reason South Korea which provides the third largest military contingent in the war wasn't represented aboard the Kennedy. The British Defense Ministry also wasn't there but, as we shall see, it had already received the message: we need help.

ZNet