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US Defense Secretary Donald H.Rumsfeld had repeatedly rejected advice from senior war planners that more troops and heavy equipment be deployed in the Gulf region before the Iraq war began, the New Yorker Magazine reported.
"He thought he knew better. He was the decision-maker at every turn," an unidentified senior Pentagon planner told the magazine in its edition to be released Monday.
Planners had recommended deploying four or more Army divisions and shipping enough tanks and other heavy vehicles for three or four divisions in advance, but their proposals were rejected, the magazine said.
Rumsfeld had also overruled advice from General Tommy Franks, head of US Central Command and commander of the Iraq war, to delay the invasion after Turkey's parliament refused to allow tens of thousands of US troops to enter Iraq from Turkish soil, it said.
"This is tragic. American lives are being lost," the magazine quoted a senior planner as saying.
Rumsfeld has insisted that the US-led coalition forces have made "substantial" progress, with some troops having moved within 50 miles (80 kilometers) of Baghdad in a week, but a former intelligence official was quoted as saying that the war was now a stalemate.
Pentagon officials said earlier this week that they plan to insert as many as 100,000 more US troops into Iraq by the end of April, to bring the total of US-led forces there to about 225,000.
(Xinhua News Agency March 30, 2003)
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