"Defeating Iraqi Insurgents Was Never Part Of Mission"

General: "Never A Mission" To Defeat Iraq's Insurgents

By Noah Shachtman
June 18, 2007 2:54:45 PM
Wired

If these clips from former Gen. Jack Keane are any indication, tomorrow night's edition of Frontline -- on the Iraq war's "endgame" -- could be a blockbuster.

"We never even considered an insurgency as a reasonable option. We took down the regime, and we thought what we had to do then was occupy then country, stabilize it, and in the mater of a few months we could reduce the force," says Keane, the former Army Vice Chief of Staff and intellectual co-author of the current troop "surge."

And while the President may have been "us[ing] terms like 'win,' 'we're going to defeat the insurgents,' 'victory,'" Keane adds, "we never had that as a mission in Iraq."

Take a look...