U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, on a visit in Mosul with soldiers just three days after a devastating bombing attack on a U.S. military dining hall, told them he remained confident of defeating the "insurgency" and stabilizing Iraq.
"There's no doubt in my mind, this is achievable," Rumsfeld told soldiers. He promised them that later in life they will look back and feel pride at having contributed to a mission of historic importance.
"When it looks bleak, when one worries about how it's going to come out, when one reads and hears the naysayers and the doubters who say it can't be done, and that we're in a quagmire here," one should recall that there have been such doubters "throughout every conflict in the history of the world," he said, according to the AP.
In an interview aboard the C-17 cargo plane that brought him to Mosul, Rumsfeld said he'd been planning to visit U.S. troops long before Tuesday's deadly attack.
