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Lack of funds impeding Iraq war, army tells Bush

Suzanne Goldenberg and
Richard Norton-Taylor

A serious rebuke of American President's wartime leadership

Washington/London: United States President George W. Bush suffered a serious rebuke of his wartime leadership on Monday when his Army Chief said he did not have enough money to fight the war in Iraq.

Six weeks before midterm elections in which the war is a crucial issue, the protest from the army head, General Peter Schoomaker, exposes concerns within the U.S. military about the strain of the war on Iraq, and growing tensions between uniformed personnel and Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld.

Three retired senior military officers on Monday accused Mr Rumsfeld of bungling the war on Iraq, and said the Pentagon was ``incompetent strategically, operationally and tactically''. Major General Paul Eaton, a retired officer who was in charge of training Iraqi troops, said: ``Mr Rumsfeld and his immediate team must be replaced or we will see two more years of extraordinarily bad decision-making.''

The rare criticism from the three officers, all veterans of the Iraq war, is an embarrassment to Mr Bush at a time when his party had hoped to campaign on its strong leadership in the ``war on terror''.

The officers echoed the findings of the National Intelligence Estimate at the weekend, which said the Iraq war had fuelled Islamist extremism around the world. They also accused the Pentagon of putting soldiers' lives at risk by failing to provide the best equipment available. The criticism comes amid an unprecedented show of defiance from Gen Schoomaker. The seriousness of the protest was underlined by Gen Schoomaker's reputation as an ally of Mr. Rumsfeld.

``It's quite a debacle,'' said Loren Thompson, a military analyst at the Lexington Institute thinktank. ``Virtually everyone in the army feels as though their needs have been shortchanged.''

Gen Schoomaker's defiance gives a voice to growing concern within the military about the costs of America's wars, and the long-term strain of carrying out operations around the world. —

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

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