WASHINGTON - Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld is questioning whether the United States is winning its war against international terrorism.
"Today, we lack the metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror," wrote Rumsfeld, one of the main architects of the campaign, in a confidential Oct. 16 memo to his top civilian and military advisers. "Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than [are] deploying against us?"
Rumsfeld later declared, "It's pretty clear that the [U.S.-led] coalition can win in Afghanistan and Iraq in one way or another, but it will be a long, hard slog."
His private remarks, first reported by USA Today, are a far more somber assessment of the U.S.-led operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and against Islamic terrorists than the public assertions of Rumsfeld, President Bush and his other top aides and the administration's campaign to publicize good news from Iraq.
Rumsfeld, speaking Wednesday on Capitol Hill, defended the memo as an exhortation to top Pentagon civilian and military officials to think more broadly about how to wage a long-term fight against terrorism.
But Democrats seized on the document as an acknowledgment that the U.S. efforts to subdue anti-U.S. attacks in Iraq, bolster the Afghan government against a resurgent Taliban and defeat al-Qaida and its allies have stalled.
"Secretary Rumsfeld's comments are an illustration of the concern that they have about the failure of their policies in Iraq so far. There can be no other description of those words than that," said Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-N.D.
In his memo, Rumsfeld said that operations against al-Qaida since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks have produced "mixed results," and that while members of the terrorist network are under pressure, "a great many remain at large."
He said U.S.-led forces in Iraq have made "reasonable progress" in capturing or killing the top 55 fugitives from the regime of ousted dictator Saddam Hussein, but there was "slower progress" in tracking down leaders of Afghanistan's former ruling Taliban movement.
Rumsfeld also acknowledged that a U.S.-led offensive in March to crush Ansar al Islam, a group of Iraqi Kurds linked to al-Qaida, failed to eliminate the organization, which U.S. generals in Iraq blame for some of the increasing attacks on Americans and their allies.
While the United States is doing a lot to fight terrorism, Rumsfeld contended, it's doing little to dissuade a new generation of Muslim extremists from being recruited.
"The cost-benefit ratio is against us! Our cost is billions against the terrorists' costs of millions," he warned.
Rumsfeld said the U.S. military isn't properly structured for fighting a lengthy global war on terrorism, and he wondered if a "new institution" that combines the capabilities of the armed services and other U.S. agencies should be created. In the past, Rumsfeld and other Pentagon officials have sought to assume some of the intelligence missions of the Central Intelligence Agency.
"My impression is that we have not yet made truly bold moves, although we have made many sensible, logical moves in the right direction, but are they enough?" Rumsfeld asked.
Rumsfeld sent the memo to Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz; Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith; the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force Gen. Richard Myers; and the vice chairman, Marine Gen. Peter Pace.
White House and Pentagon officials denied that the memo represented an admission that the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan and against al-Qaida are not going well.
Instead, they portrayed it as a classic Rumsfeld effort to challenge senior civilian and military officials to find more resourceful and imaginative ways to succeed in Iraq and Afghanistan and to prevail against international terrorists.
The memo urged top civilian and uniformed defense officials "to look beyond the treetops because the things that we really need to think about that are going to extend well beyond our tenure is: Are we organized the right way?" said Pentagon spokesman Lawrence DiRita.
But in a reflection of administration infighting over the wisdom of attacking Iraq, several senior U.S. officials said leaking the memo appeared to be an effort to divert attention from the Pentagon's role in creating some of the problems in Iraq, Afghanistan and the hunt for al-Qaida.
By helping to persuade Bush to divert U.S. special forces, intelligence assets, money and time from hunting Osama bin Laden's followers to invading Iraq, Rumsfeld "manifestly weakened our efforts to subdue al-Qaida and its supporters," said one official, who agreed to speak only on the condition of anonymity because Bush has told his top aides to stop talking publicly about policy disputes.
Moreover, other top officials said, by insisting that the United States go to war in Iraq without assembling a broad international coalition that included some Muslim nations, Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney and other officials unwittingly made it easier for bin Laden and others to portray America's wars against Saddam and terrorism as a single war against Islam.
"This (memo) gives bin Laden his next tape," said one official. "Nothing will inspire more jihadists than the prospect of victory."
"The memo calls for some structural and tactical changes to solve the problems, but the problems aren't structural or tactical, they're strategic," said one top official, who also spoke only on the condition of anonymity.
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