"mr secretary, you're a relatively huge asshole."
from a press briefing on tuesday.
QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, you mentioned the thousand death mark approaching. The number of U.S. troops killed per day is about two per day; it's been about the same for roughly the last year. What does that say about the resilience of the insurgency there? And was it underestimated?
SEC. RUMSFELD: There's no question but that the resistance is what it is. It is a combination of terrorists, former regime elements and criminals that are being paid by terrorists or former regime elements. And they are -- if you think about the fact that we have thousands of patrols every day, the coalition does, and the Iraqi security forces, which now number -- at the fully trained and fully equipped are close to 100,000, and there are another large tens of thousands beyond that that are not quite fully trained or fully equipped. If you take all of those patrols, and look at the number of incidents, they're relatively small. If you look at them from our standpoint, a single loss of life is large, and it's a life that's not going to be lived. I don't know how to calculate it or calibrate it for you any better than that.
QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, you mentioned the thousand death mark approaching. The number of U.S. troops killed per day is about two per day; it's been about the same for roughly the last year. What does that say about the resilience of the insurgency there? And was it underestimated?
SEC. RUMSFELD: There's no question but that the resistance is what it is. It is a combination of terrorists, former regime elements and criminals that are being paid by terrorists or former regime elements. And they are -- if you think about the fact that we have thousands of patrols every day, the coalition does, and the Iraqi security forces, which now number -- at the fully trained and fully equipped are close to 100,000, and there are another large tens of thousands beyond that that are not quite fully trained or fully equipped. If you take all of those patrols, and look at the number of incidents, they're relatively small. If you look at them from our standpoint, a single loss of life is large, and it's a life that's not going to be lived. I don't know how to calculate it or calibrate it for you any better than that.
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