April 16, 2006: Iraq Commander Says Rumsfeld Refused Requests for More Troops during Iraq War

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer interviews one of its military analysts, retired Army General James “Spider” Marks. Blitzer asks Marks if Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ever rejected “recommendations from military commanders for more troops.” Marks replies: “Sure. Oh, absolutely. I mean, that’s been documented if you read General [Tommy] Franks’s book [American Soldier], and the current book, Cobra II [by Michael Gordon and another military analyst, Bernard Trainor], indicates very, very clearly, and in fact, that is in fact what happened. We requested the 1st Cavalry Division. That was denied. At a very critical point in the war, I might say. The metric that was established then was success against the Republican Guard and Saddam [Hussein]‘s forces when clearly the desired end state was what’s going to happen after the forces have been dealt with, and what do you do when you’ve got this military presence in Iraq. Clearly, the presence of more combat forces on the ground would have been needed.” [CNN, 4/16/2006] Later, during a Pentagon briefing of a gathering of military analysts, Rumsfeld will claim that he never denied any such troop increases, but that commanders such as Marks refused to accept additional troops (see Late December, 2006).