Rice on defensive over strength of U.S. forces

Rice: Bush ‘listened’ to all concerned
Rice said Bush “listened to the advice of his advisers and ultimately, he listened to the advice of his commanders, the people who actually had to execute the war plan. And he listened to them several times,” she told ABC’s “This Week.”

“When the war plan was put together, it was put together, also, with consideration of what would happen after Saddam Hussein was actually overthrown,” Rice said.

In January, Pentagon officials acknowledged that Paul Bremer, the senior U.S. official in Iraq during the first year of the war, told Rumsfeld in May 2004 that a far larger number of U.S. troops were needed to effectively fight the insurgency, but his advice was rejected.

Bremer said his memo to Rumsfeld suggested 500,000 troops were needed — more than three times the number there at the time.

Rice calls for looking forward
“There will be time to go back and look at those days of the war and, after the war, to examine what went right and what went wrong,” Rice said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

“But the goal and the purpose now is to make certain that we take advantage of what is now a very good movement forward on the political front to help this Iraqi government,” she said.

Powell was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the 1991 Gulf War and is known for his belief in deploying decisive force with a clear exit strategy in any conflict.

“The president’s military advisers felt that the size of the force was adequate; they may still feel that years later. Some of us don’t. I don’t,” Powell said. “In my perspective, I would have preferred more troops, but you know, this conflict is not over.”

“At the time, the president was listening to those who were supposed to be providing him with military advice,” Powell said. “They were anticipating a different kind of immediate aftermath of the fall of Baghdad; it turned out to be not exactly as they had anticipated.”

Rumsfeld has rejected criticism that he sent too few U.S. troops to Iraq, saying that Franks and generals who oversaw the campaign’s planning had determined the overall number of troops, and that he and Bush agreed with them. The recommendation of senior military commanders at the time was about 145,000 troops.

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