Rumsfeld questions Obama's claim on troops

Donald Rumsfeld today questioned President Obama's claim that military commanders had asked for additional troops during the Bush administration.

In his speech at West Point last night, Obama claimed that before he took office, "commanders in Afghanistan repeatedly asked for support to deal with the reemergence of the Taliban, but these reinforcements did not arrive."

Rumsfeld is now strongly denying that claim, calling it a "bald misstatement."

"I am not aware of a single request of that nature between 2001 and 2006," Rumsfeld said. "If any such requests occurred, ‘repeated’ or not, the White House should promptly make them public.  The President's assertion does a disservice to the truth and, in particular, to the thousands of men and women in uniform who have fought, served and sacrificed in Afghanistan.”  

However, General McKiernan, who President Obama removed as the head general in Afghanistan, told the Washington Post in August that he did in fact ask Bush for more troops in 2007, after Rumsfeld had been replaced:

"There was a saying when I got there: If you're in Iraq and you need something, you ask for it," McKiernan said in his first interview since being fired. "If you're in Afghanistan and you need it, you figure out how to do without it."

By late last summer, he decided to tell George W. Bush's White House what he knew it did not want to hear: He needed 30,000 more troops. He wanted to send some to the country's east to bolster other U.S. forces, and some to the south to assist overwhelmed British and Canadian units in Helmand and Kandahar provinces.

The Bush administration opted not to act on McKiernan's request and instead set out to persuade NATO allies to contribute more troops. With Washington then viewing NATO as the solution -- not the problem -- McKiernan seemed like the right general to help win over the allies.

See Rumsfeld's full statement after the jump.

Washington, D.C. – Responding to President Obama’s address on Afghanistan yesterday, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld issued the following statement:

“In his speech to the nation last night, President Obama claimed that ‘Commanders in Afghanistan repeatedly asked for support to deal with the reemergence of the Taliban, but these reinforcements did not arrive.’ Such a bald misstatement, at least as it pertains to the period I served as Secretary of Defense, deserves a response.” 

“I am not aware of a single request of that nature between 2001 and 2006.  If any such requests occurred, ‘repeated’ or not, the White House should promptly make them public.  The President's assertion does a disservice to the truth and, in particular, to the thousands of men and women in uniform who have fought, served and sacrificed in Afghanistan.”  

“In the interest of better understanding the President's announcement last night, I suggest that the Congress review the President’s assertion in the forthcoming debate and determine exactly what requests were made, who made them, and where and why in the chain of command they were denied.”