\tR\u00e9cemment, nous avons pr\u00e9sent\u00e9 l’affaire du m\u00e9contentement des grands chefs am\u00e9ricains de th\u00e9\u00e2tre (les CINCs), notamment l’amiral Blair (Pacifique) et le g\u00e9n\u00e9ral Ralston (Europe), lors de leur passage devant le Congr\u00e8s<\/a>. Leur m\u00e9contentement portait sur une dramatique absence de moyens pour remplir leurs missions respectives, cette absence s’expliquant par la priorit\u00e9 donn\u00e9e \u00e0 Central Command (le CINC de Central Command, lui, est en effet tr\u00e8s favoris\u00e9 par contraste, bien qu’il ait d’autres probl\u00e8mes<\/a>). Ce qui nous int\u00e9ressait dans ce petit d\u00e9bat, c’est ce que cette situation nous dit et nous d\u00e9montre des v\u00e9ritables capacit\u00e9s militaires am\u00e9ricaines.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tLa chose (les t\u00e9moignages de Blair, Ralston et compagnie) n’est pas pass\u00e9e compl\u00e8tement inaper\u00e7ue. Les journalistes US, qui songent parfois \u00e0 poser encore des questions embarrassantes, s’en sont enquis aupr\u00e8s du duo Rumsfeld-Myers (le secr\u00e9taire \u00e0 la d\u00e9fense et le pr\u00e9sident du comit\u00e9 des chefs d’\u00e9tat-major), lors de la conf\u00e9rence de presse quotidienne du Pentagone, le 28 mars. Nous publions ci-apr\u00e8s les extraits de cette conf\u00e9rence de presse qui concernent ce probl\u00e8me (il s’agit de la transcription officielle diffus\u00e9e par le Pentagone).<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tLes d\u00e9clarations de Rumsfeld-Myers du 28 mars ont amen\u00e9 quelques r\u00e9actions feutr\u00e9es dans la presse US, qui n’a pu \u00e9viter de constater qu’il y avait un r\u00e9el d\u00e9saccord entre Rumsfeld-Myers et les grands chefs qu’on avait entendus au Congr\u00e8s. Il y a eu notamment un article du Washington Post du 29 mars<\/a> et un autre de USA Today du 29 mars<\/a>. Les commentaires sont assez neutres mais mesurent n\u00e9anmoins qu’on trouve dans cette affaire la mise en \u00e9vidence d’une m\u00e9sentente s\u00e9rieuse (\u00ab a rare show of discordence<\/em> \u00bb, \u00e9crit USA Today<\/em>).<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tCe que nous montrent les extraits ci-dessous, c’est un art plus ou moins consomm\u00e9 des deux hommes, Rumsfeld et Myers, pour \u00e9viter de r\u00e9pondre sur l’essentiel (tout en notant que les questions sont loin, elles aussi, d’aller \u00e0 l’essentiel). A la remarque d’un journalistes que les CINCs sont venus \u00e0 Washington pour r\u00e9clamer des forces suppl\u00e9mentaires (\u00ab I need more<\/em> \u00bb), r\u00e9pondre comme le fait Rumsfeld : \u00ab And they do all the time<\/em> \u00bb ; ou bien, \u00e0 la remarque que le Pentagone donne la priorit\u00e9 \u00e0 Central Command au d\u00e9triment des autres, r\u00e9pondre comme le fait Myers : \u00ab We prioritize all the time. That’s what we do<\/em> \u00bb, — tout cela, cette esp\u00e8ce de langue de bois sp\u00e9cieuse, cette g\u00e9n\u00e9ralisation au d\u00e9triment de toute pr\u00e9cision dans la r\u00e9ponse, nous indiquent \u00e0 suffisance la difficult\u00e9 pour les chefs du Pentagone de faire un sort aux arguments de leurs commandants de th\u00e9\u00e2tre. On doit tenir cette esquive g\u00e9n\u00e9rale du fond du probl\u00e8me pour la confirmation que les plaintes des CINCs devant le Congr\u00e8s sont justifi\u00e9es et que leurs forces sont effectivement insuffisantes pour accomplir les missions qui leur sont confi\u00e9es. On en tirera les conclusions qu’il faut quant aux capacit\u00e9s r\u00e9elles des forces arm\u00e9es am\u00e9ricaines.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tUn autre point, annexe mais pas sans int\u00e9r\u00eat, est la fa\u00e7on assez cavali\u00e8re de Rumsfeld de contredire ses officiers g\u00e9n\u00e9raux, en g\u00e9n\u00e9ral sans prendre trop de gants et sans souci des r\u00e9f\u00e9rences \u00e0 la r\u00e9alit\u00e9 du probl\u00e8me trait\u00e9. D’une fa\u00e7on plus g\u00e9n\u00e9rale, on pourrait faire l’hypoth\u00e8se qu’il y a l\u00e0 un probl\u00e8me de personne, qui s’est d’ailleurs manifest\u00e9, d’une autre fa\u00e7on, entre Rumsfeld et son chef de guerre, le g\u00e9n\u00e9ral Tommy Franks. La conclusion sur ce point, et le \u00ab\u00a0message\u00a0\u00bb contenu dans le comportement de Rumsfeld, c’est que la RP (relations publiques) passe avant toute chose pour lui, y compris avant ses bonnes relations avec ses g\u00e9n\u00e9raux et avant la situation r\u00e9elle des forces. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tVoici les extraits de la conf\u00e9rence de presse, principalement en deux extraits diff\u00e9rents.<\/p>\n \t(…)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tQuestion: Mr Secretary, recently some of the CINCs testified before Congress, saying that U.S. troops are overextended and exhausted. Without getting into where the next step would be, can the U.S. fight a major-theater war simultaneously to current operations in Afghanistan? And what would need to be done before that happens?<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tRumsfeld: Well, first, I don’t believe some of the CINCs did say, quote, \u00a0\u00bbthat the American troops are overextended and exhausted.\u00a0\u00bb There may have been a CINC who said it. And there’s no question but that if you looked around the world, you could find a troop or two who’s tired, and with good reason. They’ve been doing a great job.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tBut I think it would be a fundamental misunderstanding for him to think or for anyone to take his words and believe that the men and women in uniform around the world for the United States would even begin to fit that characterization. They don’t. Those of you have been out and talked to them, you know that. You know they’re up. Their morale is high. They’re doing a great job. They’re proud of what they’re doing. They recognize<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tthe importance of what they’re doing. And it’s a disservice to them to leave that impression, in my view.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tI would like — a second — I’ll answer the second part of the question. Then I’d like General Myers to comment on it, because I think it’s an important question. You can be absolutely certain that to the extent that the United States of America decides to undertake an activity, that we will be capable of doing it.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tDick Myers. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tMyers: Let me take on the first part of the question. You said \u00a0\u00bboverextended,\u00a0\u00bb and I think — to put that in context, I think the question was …<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tRumsfeld: \u00a0\u00bbExhausted,\u00a0\u00bb he said.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tMyers: Well, overextended and exhausted.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tQ: No, these are not my words.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tRumsfeld: No.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tMyers: No. No, I understand.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tQ: Okay. Quote.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tMyers: I understand. That’s the quote. But I think, to put the \u00a0\u00bboverextended,\u00a0\u00bb we — I think the secretary covered the \u00a0\u00bbexhausted\u00a0\u00bb piece — certainly we have people that are tired. But I think, in general, our force is ready and fit, I mean. And everywhere I go — and I’ve traveled — even during this war on terrorism, I’ve been able to travel some, and I think if you ask people that travel and if you would ask — put that question in the right context, you would get a much different answer.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tAnd that — but let me talk about the overextended piece just a minute. That was in the context of what we do every day around here. I mean, certain unified commanders were asked, \u00a0\u00bbDo you feel like you have the assets you need to everything you need to do in your theater?\u00a0\u00bb Clearly, we’ve made some prioritization decisions here in the Pentagon that have distributed resources perhaps different[ly] than before 9\/11. And that’s appropriate, we think. And so some unified commanders might feel they don’t have everything they need to do everything they want to do. But those were — to put it in context, that was in very specific — a question that was asked to the various commanders. So in general and to sum up, I think the secretary’s absolutely right.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tThere should be no doubt in anybody’s mind that whatever the president would ask us to do, we’re ready to do.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tQ: Simultaneous to operations in Afghanistan?<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tMyers: I would not qualify it. We’ll be ready to do whatever the president asks us to do, and it’s unqualified.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tQ: General Myers, is there one area …<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tQ: Mr. Secretary …<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t(… Plus loin dans la conf\u00e9rence de presse.<\/em><\/strong>)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tQ: General Myers, could I go back to this issue of \u00a0\u00bbexhausted\u00a0\u00bb and \u00a0\u00bbextended\u00a0\u00bb that Brett made — asked? Isn’t it true, though, that the U.S. is almost exhausted and overextended in the use of precision weapons over there? I mean, you’ve dropped like 5,000 of these satellite-guided bombs and the inventory is depleted. In that respect, isn’t the …<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tMyers: That’s not correct, Tony. The inventory is not depleted.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tQ: Give me a sense of how drawn down.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tMyers: No, I mean, even my wife understood this one when …<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tThe Press: Ooohhh!!! (Laughter.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tRumsfeld: You’re in trouble everywhere now! When you say \u00a0\u00bbeven my wife\u00a0\u00bb — even I know better than to say that! (Laughter.) I’m shocked!!<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tMyers: Mary Jo, turn off the TV because …<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t(Cross talk. Laughter.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tMyers: Thank you for your patience. (Laughter.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tNo, the issue is, are we going to stand up here and tell you how many JDAMs we have? No, we are not. But I just told you we are not exhausted — what term did you use? — depleted. We’re not depleted.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tAnd during Allied Force, there was a big listing of our munitions, some of our precision munitions, and it was Mary Jo who turned to me, my wife, and said, \u00a0\u00bbWhy are we telling the world what our — the status of our munitions? Shouldn’t that be classified information?\u00a0\u00bb And it should have been, and for some reason we felt obligated to spit it out there. In this case, we are not depleted; let me just say that. It goes …<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tRumsfeld: It also happens that the admiral, who was discussing this subject, was wrong. He — maybe not wrong; he may have been speaking of something he knew something about but should not — been speaking about, because the levels of munitions is not everybody in the world’s business, to be perfectly honest, and he should have known better. But he may have been talking about what he did know about, in a narrower area, but not a worldwide area. And …<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tQ: Mr. Secretary …<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tQ: The comments that the — I think it was from Admiral Blair and General Ralston, as you said, talked about the fact that they were asked specifically, that they do not feel they have the forces and capabilities to conduct the missions that they have now, and that what that means is that, as General Ralston said, \u00a0\u00bbI do not have the forces in EUCOM to carry out these missions.\u00a0\u00bb But if asked to do something else, he would come back to you …<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tRumsfeld: Exactly.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tQ: … and say, \u00a0\u00bbI need more.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tRumsfeld: And they do all the time.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tQ: And what that means is, then, there will have to be a decision made and a trade-off.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tMyers: Right. We prioritize all the time. That’s what we do. And …<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tRumsfeld: Every day we’re faced with those issues, and he’s quite right. No one person is necessarily going to have every single thing they need at any given moment, unless they ask for it and then a judgment’s made as to how you want to balance those risks and how — what priorities you think are appropriate. And that’s what General Myers and I do.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tQ: Doesn’t that also beg the question how long can you maintain the war on terrorism? How long can you even maintain the …<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tRumsfeld: The answer to that question is, how long can you keep doing what it is that is necessary to protect the American people from having more World Trade Center crashes, more crashes into the Pentagon, and the use of weapons of mass destruction? And the answer is, the United States of America is capable of doing that as long as it is necessary, and let there be no doubt.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tQ: Can you be more specific on what you said earlier about your forces would be ready, if the president called on you tomorrow, to do anything he called on — there have been major questions raised about whether there are enough JDAMs and other weapons. To be more specific, about Iraq, what you’re saying is that if you were called on to attack Iraq tomorrow or next week, that you would be ready to do it; that wouldn’t be a problem. Is<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tthat what you’re saying? <\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tRumsfeld: You have to understand how government works.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tMyers: Right. (Laughter, cross talk.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tRumsfeld: I mean, let me just take a moment and — (laughter) — the president is not going to call up the Secretary of Defense, and the Secretary of Defense is not going to ask for the advice of General Myers if — and ask us if we would please put on our wings personally and fly over to the White House and talk to him. He knows we can’t do that. He knows our capabilities. We deal with him every day. We talk about these things. We make investments in advance for things. We arrange forces. Presidents don’t ask people to do things that are undoable. And if they do, if they ask — they more normally would ask, \u00a0\u00bbIs this doable? On what basis? At risk? And over what time period?\u00a0\u00bb And that — that’s how things get sorted out in government. I can assure you that anything that the United States needs to undertake and decides to undertake, we will undertake, and we will undertake it successfully.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tQ: In that vein …<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t(Fin du deuxi\u00e8me et dernier extrait.<\/em><\/strong>)<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" R\u00e9ponse du Pentagone au m\u00e9contentement des CINCs R\u00e9cemment, nous avons pr\u00e9sent\u00e9 l’affaire du m\u00e9contentement des grands chefs am\u00e9ricains de th\u00e9\u00e2tre (les CINCs), notamment l’amiral Blair (Pacifique) et le g\u00e9n\u00e9ral Ralston (Europe), lors de leur passage devant le Congr\u00e8s. Leur m\u00e9contentement portait sur une dramatique absence de moyens pour remplir leurs missions respectives, cette absence s’expliquant… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[705,3274,1417,3194,3275,569],"class_list":["post-65044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-analyse","tag-blair","tag-cinc","tag-myers","tag-pentagone","tag-ralston","tag-rumsfeld"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65044"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65044\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Extraits de la conf\u00e9rence de presse de Ronald Rumsfeld et du g\u00e9n\u00e9ral Richard Myers, le 28 mars 2002 au Pentagone<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n