The U.S. military in Iraq has been holding face-to-face meetings with some Iraqi leaders of the insurgency there, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and the U.S. commander in charge of Iraq confirmed yesterday.
Asked to respond to a report that U.S. military representatives had meetings with several Sunni Iraqi insurgents twice in June, Rumsfeld told Fox News that "there have probably been many more than that" and described the contacts as an effort to "split people off and get some people to be supportive" of the political process in Iraq.
So, did he offer them therapy? Or cake and ice cream?
If the shoe were on the other foot, this would be spun hard by the media as "negotiating with terrorists". We're supposed to be bombing them out of existance, not talking with them, right?
Karl Rove said that Democrats are wimps, and would have tried to try to "understand" terrorists, and to "offer them therapy". So, what' Rumsfeld doing talking with the people bombing our troops?
He also noted
Rumsfeld acknowledged that there is no military solution to ending the insurgency and that the talks with Iraqi insurgents were part of a search for a political solution to the war. "I mean, foreign troops are not going to beat the insurgency," he said. "It's going to be the Iraqi people that are going to beat the insurgency and Iraqi security forces. That's just the nature of an insurgency."
He also pointed out, on Fox News, that "insurgencies tend to go on five, six, eight, 10, 12 years."
There's a diary on this other observation
here.