The date is Sept. 30th 2004; the place is Coral Gables, Florida; the event is the first presidential debates with Sen. John Kerry and Pres. George W. Bush.

Following a question posed by host Jim Lehrer, “Can you give us specifics, in terms of a scenario, time lines, et cetera, for ending major U.S. military involvement in Iraq?” John Kerry said:

“Even the administration has admitted they haven’t done the training, because they came back to Congress a few weeks ago and asked for a complete reprogramming of the money.

Now what greater admission is there, 16 months afterwards. ‘Oops, we haven’t done the job. We have to start to spend the money now. Will you guys give us permission to shift it over into training?’” (Washingtonpost.com)

Bush responded with:

“There are 100,000 troops trained, police, guard, special units, border patrol. There’s going to be 125,000 trained by the end of this year. Yes, we’re getting the job done. It’s hard work. Everybody knows it’s hard work, because there’s a determined enemy that’s trying to defeat us.” (Washingtonpost.com)

(Note: the 125,000 number Bush guaranteed was not achieved, at present just 10 days prior to the end of the year the State Department’s weekly assessment of Iraqi security forces shows that the number of newly trained troops has stayed level since early November at about 114,000)

Today an article in the New York Times stated President Bush acknowledged that the United States had achieved only “mixed” success in training Iraqi troops to secure the country.  I’m assuming this “hard work” is a bit too hard for our President and his administration to complete.

The Times article goes on to state criticism from both Republicans and Democrats alike.  Words such as “bottom level troops” and “no effective leadership” are used occasionally to describe recent trips gauging Iraqi troop development (and those comments were made by Republicans).  Again, Rumsfeld is the scapegoat.  Blame quickly diminishes from anyone other than the Secretary of Defense.  Washington finger-pointing remains focused on what my article yesterday noted.  Rumsfeld, if congress has their way, is going down.

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