WASHINGTON – Just back from Baghdad and eager to discuss promising developments, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice found herself knocked off message Sunday, forced to defend prewar planning and troop levels against an unlikely critic – Colin Powell, her predecessor at the State Department.
For the Bush administration, it was a rare instance of a dissenter with ties to the White House going public.
Powell revisited the question of whether the U.S. had a large enough force to oust former President Saddam Hussein and then secure the peace. He said he advised Bush before the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003 to send more troops to Iraq, but that the administration did not follow his recommendation.
Rice, Bush’s national security adviser during the run-up to the war, neither confirmed nor denied Powell’s assertion. But she spent a good part of her appearances on three Sunday talk shows defending the White House.
“I don’t remember specifically what Secretary Powell may be referring to, but I’m quite certain that there were lots of discussions about how best to fulfill the mission that we went into Iraq,” Rice said.
“And I have no doubt that all of this was taken into consideration. But that when it came down to it, the president listens to his military advisers who were to execute the plan,” she told CNN’s “Late Edition.”
Powell, on Britain’s ITV television Sunday, said he gave the advice to now retired Gen. Tommy Franks, who developed and executed the Iraq invasion plan, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld while the president was present.
“I made the case to Gen. Franks and Secretary Rumsfeld before the president that I was not sure we had enough troops,” Powell said. “The case was made, it was listened to, it was considered. … A judgment was made by those responsible that the troop strength was adequate.
In an interview with AARP The Magazine released Sunday, Powell did not say what advice he gave Bush about whether to go to war. Known to be less hawkish than Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney and some other presidential advisers, Powell implied he had been more cautious.
“The decisions that were made were not made by me or Mr. Cheney or Rumsfeld. They were made by the president of the United States,” he said.
“And my responsibility was to tell him what I thought. And if others were going in at different times and telling him different things, it was his decision to decide whether he wanted to listen to that person or somebody else.”
Rice said Bush “listened to the advice of his advisers and ultimately, he listened to the advice of his commanders, the people who actually had to execute the war plan. And he listened to them several times,” she told ABC’s “This Week.”
“When the war plan was put together, it was put together, also, with consideration of what would happen after Saddam Hussein was actually overthrown,” Rice said.
“The president’s military advisers felt that the size of the force was adequate; they may still feel that years later. Some of us don’t. I don’t,” Powell said. “In my perspective, I would have preferred more troops, but you know, this conflict is not over.”
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