March 9, 2006:
"The plan is to prevent a civil war, and to the extent one were to occur, to have the -- from a security standpoint -- have the Iraqi security forces deal with it, to the extent they are able to."
- Donald Rumsfeld
Supporting evidence for Mr. Rumsfeld's claims to follow in extended...
February 24, 2006:
The only Iraqi battalion designated as level 1 combat ready was downgraded to level 2 status, meaning that it could not operate with out support from U.S. forces.
CNN
March 1, 2006:
"Pace, speaking by phone from his home in Sydney, said some of the officials connected with the morgue had been put 'under a lot of these pressures' and had been threatened in the past and told not to investigate the killings of those brought to the morgue 'precisely because it was considered a way of attributing responsibility for such crimes.'"
Washington Post
March 2, 2006:
"Faik Bakir, the director of the Baghdad morgue, has fled Iraq in fear of his life after reporting that more than 7,000 people have been killed by death squads in recent months, the outgoing head of the UN human rights office in Iraq has disclosed."
The Guardian
March 7, 2006:
"From what I've seen thus far, much of the reporting in the U.S. and abroad has exaggerated the situation, according to General Casey. The number of attacks on mosques, as he pointed out, had been exaggerated. The number of Iraqi deaths had been exaggerated."
- Donald Rumsfeld
Iraq is not in a civil war and never will be in a civil war until Rumsfeld decides that it is. He knows it is not and never will be in a civil war because claims of sectarian violence are greatly exagerrated. Just ask Mr. Bakir...if you can find him.
And of course if a civil war were to occur, which it won't, we would certainly be able to rely on all of those combat ready Iraqi battalions, so there is no need to worry about our good American soldiers being placed in harm's way. And of course all of those numerous combat ready battalions would certainly not have their own agenda in a civil war because they most certainly aren't populated and run as local partisan militias and most certainly aren't heavily infiltrated with insurgent spies so we can, of course, depend on their trustworthiness in the field and keep our own soldiers out of combat.
Yes, Mr. Rumsfeld, "to the extent" indeed.
The Bagdad Bob Show, once beloved by all, no longer airs out of Iraq. Luckily, however, we can now all watch the Bagdad Don show. Someone please pass the popcorn. I hear that today all of the insurgent infidels and media heathens who threaten to undermine a successful democracy in Iraq will be defeated soon. In fact, there is no presence of insurgent infidels in Iraq at all, there is no civil war, and the Iraqi battalions have assumed all major combat responsibilities. The insurgency will end in failure. Those media losers, I think their repeated frequent lies are bringing them down very rapidly.... Baghdad is secure, is safe.
God bless America!