Rumsfeld says he did not 'advocate' invading Iraq

20/11/2005 16h48WASHINGTON (AFP) - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has asserted that he did not press for the US-led invasion of Iraq, as public disaffection for the US military operation there reaches new highs. "I didn't advocate invasion," Rumsfeld told ABC television Sunday, when asked if he would have advocated an invasion of Iraq if he had known that no weapons of mass destruction would be found there. The US Defense chief added: "I wasn't asked," when asked whether he supported the March 2003 invasion.

Asked on ABC television's "This Week" program if he was trying to distance himself after the fact from the controversial US decision to invade Iraq, Rumsfeld replied: "Of course not. Of course not. I completely agreed with the decision to go to war and said that a hundred times. Don't even suggest that.

"But Rumsfeld's insistence that he had not advocated an invasion of Iraq appears to contradict several media reports, and at least one book by a former White House couter-terrorism chief. CBS News has reported, citing notes by Pentagon officials, that Rumsfeld told his aides to come up with plans for striking Iraq hours after the September 11, 2001 attacks on Washington and New York. The notes, cited by CBS, quote Rumsfeld as saying he wanted "best info fast. Judge whether good enough to hit S.H. (Saddam Hussein)".

Former White House terrorism czar, Richard Clarke, said in his book "Against all Enemies" that days after the September 11 attacks, Rumsfeld was pushing for retaliatory strikes on Iraq, despite questions over Iraq's links to Al-Qaeda. Clarke suggests the idea took him so aback, he initally thought Rumsfeld was joking. "Rumsfeld was saying that we needed to bomb Iraq," Clarke has said in describing White House deliberations after the September 11 attacks.