Rumsfeld: leaving Iraq like giving Nazis Germany

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Leaving Iraq now would be like
handing postwar Germany back to the Nazis, Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld said in a column published on Sunday, the third
anniversary of the start of the Iraq war.

“Turning our backs on postwar Iraq today would be the
modern equivalent of handing postwar Germany back to the
Nazis,” he wrote in an essay in The Washington Post.

Rumsfeld said “the terrorists” were trying to fuel
sectarian tensions to spark a civil war, but they must be
“watching with fear” the progress in the country over the past
three years.

In London, former Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said on
Sunday that Iraq is in a civil war and is nearing the point of
no return when the sectarian violence will spill over
throughout the Middle East.

“It is unfortunate that we are in civil war. We are losing
each day, as an average, 50 to 60 people throughout the
country, if not more. If this is not civil war, then God knows
what civil war is,” he told BBC television.

Rumsfeld’s view was that the Iraqi insurgency was failing.

“The terrorists seem to recognize that they are losing in
Iraq. I believe that history will show that to be the case,” he
wrote.

He said 75 percent of all military operations in Iraq
include Iraqi security forces.

“Today, some 100 Iraqi army battalions of several hundred
troops each are in the fight, and 49 percent control their own
battle space,” Rumsfeld wrote.

Thousands of anti-war protesters gathered in cities around
the world for demonstrations on Saturday to mark the
anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

Doubts about the Iraq war have helped drive down President
George W. Bush’s approval ratings to their lowest level.

In a Newsweek poll released on Saturday, only 36 percent of
Americans said they approved of his performance as president.
Sixty-five percent disapprove of his handling of the situation
in Iraq, once one of his strongest suits.

Bush used his weekly radio address on Saturday to urge
Americans to resist a temptation to retreat from Iraq, but
opposition Democrats pressed him to offer a plan for drawing
down U.S. troops and said Iraq was moving closer to a civil
war.

Rumsfeld wrote that if U.S. forces leave Iraq now, “there
is every reason to believe Saddamists and terrorists will fill
the vacuum — and the free world might not have the will to
face them again.”

A recent Le Moyne College/Zogby poll showed 72 percent of
U.S. troops serving in Iraq think that the United States should
exit within a year. Nearly one in four said the troops should
leave immediately.