LONDON, Feb. 26 (UPI) -- Former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell has admitted what he has long been suspected of thinking: coalition troop levels in Iraq have been too low.
Powell said Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's controversial plan to fight the war with limited troop numbers had been an outstanding success, but Powell said the "nation building" that followed has been deeply flawed, the Telegraph reported Saturday.
There had been "enough troops for war, but not for peace, for establishing order. My own preference would have been for more forces after the conflict," he said.
Powell told the London newspaper he warned President Bush over dinner in August 2002 that the problem with Iraq was not going to be the invasion, but what followed.
"This place will crack like a goblet and it will be a problem to pick up the bits," Powell said he told Bush. "It was on this basis that he decided to let me see if we could find a United Nations solution to this."
