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U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld questioned whether the United States was doing enough to win the war on terrorism, citing "mixed results" in the fight against al-Qaeda in a pointed memo to top Pentagon officials last week.

Rumsfeld said the U.S.-led coalitions would win in Afghanistan and Iraq, but not without "a long, hard slog." He wrote that the United States "has made reasonable progress in capturing or killing the top 55 Iraqis" but has made "somewhat slower progress" tracking down top Taliban leaders who sheltered al-Qaida figures in Afghanistan.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld speak at a press briefing at the Pentagon Oct. 21, 2003. He gave an upbeat report on the status of the military's mission in Iraq.  [AP]

The memo, dated Oct. 16 and first reported Wednesday by USA Today, offers a much more stark assessment of the global war on terrorism than is contained in Rumsfeld's public statements.

"It is pretty clear that the coalition can win in Afghanistan and Iraq in one way or another, but it will be a long, hard slog," he wrote.

Rumsfeld's spokesman, Larry Di Rita, told reporters Wednesday that the memo was meant to raise "big questions that deserve big thinking" and preserve a "constant sense of urgency" about where the war on terrorism was heading.

Later Wednesday at a news conference on Capitol Hill, Rumsfeld elaborated on his thinking behind the memo.

"The big question is the broader one about the global war on terror," Rumsfeld said Wednesday evening.

"It's gonna take time. And it's not simply a Defense Department matter."

Responding to questions about how the United States measures progress in postwar Iraq, he said: "We have lost of yardsticks and metrics to measures what happens in Iraq, how we're doing in the capturing or killing the top 55 Iraqi leaders. The tough one is the macro: How many young people are being taught to go out as suicide bombers and kill people?"

White House press secretary Scott McClellan, traveling with President Bush in Australia, expressed support for Rumsfeld. "That's exactly what a strong and capable secretary of defense like Secretary Rumsfeld should be doing," he said.

Bush talked only in general terms about the war on terrorism with reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Canberra, where he was to meet Prime Minister John Howard.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld speaks at a press briefing at the Pentagon Oct. 21, 2003. With him is Joint Chiefs of Staff Vice Chairman Gen. Peter Pace (R). [AP]

"I've always felt that there's a tendency of people to kind of seek a comfort zone and hope that the war on terror is over," Bush said. "And I view it as a responsibility of the United States to remind people of our mutual obligations to deal with the terrorists."

On the battle against the terror network blamed for the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, Rumsfeld wrote: "We are having mixed results with Al Qaeda, although we have put considerable pressure on them - nonetheless, a great many remain at large." They include the group's top leader, Osama bin Laden, and his right-hand man, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Rumsfeld wrote "we are just getting started" in battling Ansar al-Islam, an Iraq-based terrorist group linked to al-Qaeda.

Di Rita, Rumsfeld's spokesman, said the memo was another in a series of provocative questions that the secretary regularly raised with Pentagon brass.

Three members of Congress who met Wednesday morning with Rumsfeld said he gave them copies of the memo and discussed it with them.

"He's asking the tough questions we all need to be asking," said Rep. Jim Turner, D-Texas.

"Today, we lack metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror," Rumsfeld wrote in the memo. "Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?"

Madrassas are Islamic religious schools. Rumsfeld and other U.S. officials say some schools run by radical groups indoctrinate students to join in an anti-U.S. holy war.

Rumsfeld's memo raises the possibility of creating "a private foundation to entice radical madrassas to a more moderate course" and questions how to block the funding of the extremist schools.

Sounding a theme Rumsfeld has voiced repeatedly in the past two years, the memo says the Defense Department is too big and slow to effectively fight small groups of terrorists.

"It is not possible to change DoD fast enough to successfully fight the global war on terror," Rumsfeld wrote. "An alternative might be to try to fashion a new institution, either within DoD or elsewhere - one that seamlessly focuses the capabilities of several departments and agencies on this key problem."

Rumsfeld also suggested that the United States might need to do more to "stop the next generation of terrorists."

"The US is putting relatively little effort into a long-range plan, but we are putting a great deal of effort into trying to stop terrorists," Rumsfeld wrote. "The cost-benefit ratio is against us! Our cost is billions against the terrorists' costs of millions."

Rumsfeld's memo came a week after The New York Times reported that the White House had ordered a "major reorganization" of the reconstruction efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. The newspaper quoted unidentified senior administration officials as saying the new Iraq Stabilization Group would be run out of the White House by national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.

Although Rumsfeld played down the report, observers said the move reflected increasing frustration within the White House over the military's inability to quell the continued violence in Iraq.

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