WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Sunday that he regretted that the United States had not been able to invade Iraq through Turkey, because Iraqi military and intelligence forces in the north of the country melted away to form the insurgency now battling U.S. and Iraqi troops.
Rumsfeld also urged the new government in Iraq to be "darned careful" to avoid staffing the country's security services with patronage appointments that could undermine their effectiveness.
Rumsfeld made the remarks during two television appearances marking the second anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Two U.S. troops were killed Sunday, the military said. One died near the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk when a homemade bomb exploded, and the other was slain in action in Al Anbar province west of Baghdad. At least 1,521 members of the American military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war, according to an Associated Press count. In other violence across the country, a U.S. convoy traveling through the Salman Pak area, 15 miles southeast of Baghdad, was attacked, U.S. officials said. Six soldiers and seven militants were wounded.
Asked what he considered to be the greatest mistake of the war, Rumsfeld replied, "Had we been successful in getting the 4th Infantry Division to come in through Turkey in the north when our forces were coming up from the south out of Kuwait, I believe that a considerably smaller number of the Baathists and the regime elements would have escaped.
"More would have been captured or killed. And as a result, the insurgency would have been at a lesser intensity than it is today," Rumsfeld told ABC's "This Week."
"We've seen attacks on infrastructure. And they've been successful in slowing economic progress and slowing political progress."
In the run-up to the Iraq war, Washington offered political and economic incentives to try to persuade Ankara to allow the U.S. military to use Turkish territory as a base for the invasion. But with public opinion in Turkey running more than 90% against the war, parliament rejected the prime minister's request and refused to allow passage of American troops or weapons into Iraq. The Army's 4th Infantry Division was rerouted and invaded Iraq from Kuwait.
However, a military analyst said Sunday that the delayed arrival of the 4th Infantry Division was far less a factor in the development of the anti-U.S. insurgency than the Pentagon's failure to plan for postwar security.
