Rumsfeld braces for more violence in Iraq

updated 9:15 p.m. ET June 26, 2005

WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Sunday he anticipates even more violence in Iraq and acknowledged that the insurgency “could go on for any number of years.”

Defeating the insurgency may take as long as 12 years, he said, with Iraqi security forces, not U.S. and foreign troops, taking the lead and finishing the job.

The assessment comes shortly after the latest Associated Press-Ipsos poll showing public doubts about the war reaching a high point — with more than half saying that invading Iraq was a mistake.

The top U.S. commander in the Middle East appealed for public support of the soldiers and their mission. “We don’t need to fight this war looking over our shoulder worrying about the support back home,” Gen. John Abizaid told CNN’s “Late Edition.”

In a deadly week for U.S. forces, an ambush on a convoy carrying female troops killed four Marines, including at least one woman. At least 1,735 members of the U.S. military have died since the war started in March 2003, according to an AP count.

On Sunday, bombings in Mosul and elsewhere in Iraq killed at least 38 people.

Making the rounds
Rumsfeld, making the rounds of the Sunday talk shows, said insurgents want to disrupt the democratic transformation as Iraqi leaders draft a constitution and plan for elections in December to choose a full-term government.

“I would anticipate you’re going to see an escalation of violence between now and the December elections,” the Pentagon chief told NBC’s “Meet the Press.” And after then, it will take a long time to drive out insurgents.

“Insurgencies tend to go on five, six, eight, 10, 12 years,” Rumsfeld said on “Fox News Sunday.”

“Coalition forces, foreign forces are not going to repress that insurgency. We’re going to create an environment that the Iraqi people and the Iraqi security forces can win against that insurgency,” he said.

A British newspaper reported Sunday that American officials recently met secretly with Iraqi insurgent commanders north of Baghdad to try to negotiate an end to the bloodshed.

Meetings with insurgents
Speaking generally, Rumsfeld said those kinds of meetings “go on all the time” and that Iraqis “will decide what their relationships with various elements of insurgents will be. We facilitate those from time to time.”

Three militant groups — al-Qaida in Iraq, the Ansar al-Sunnah Army and the Islamic Army in Iraq — issued statements on their Web sites denying they had ever negotiated with U.S. or Iraqi officials to end the insurgency.

Abizaid said U.S. and Iraqi officials “are looking for the right people in the Sunni community to talk to ... and clearly we know that the vast majority of the insurgents are from the Sunni Arab community. It makes sense to talk to them.”

Echoing Rumsfeld, Abizaid made clear that “we’re not going to compromise” with Iraq’s most-wanted terrorist, Jordanian-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

The contacts, the Pentagon leaders said, were intended to make it easier for the Shiite-led government to reach out to minority Sunnis.

The strength of the violent opposition to the U.S.-led coalition since the invasion in March 2003 has raised questions about whether the Bush administration understood that such a sustained reaction was possible.

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