Well, not in those words, but the NYTimes article in today's paper quotes Gates, in reference to a lack of support from our European allies for our continued mission in Afghanistan:
“Many of them, I think, have a problem with our involvement in Iraq and project that to Afghanistan, and do not understand the very different — for them — the very different kind of threat.”
The comments were the first in which Mr. Gates had explicitly linked European antipathy to American policy in Iraq with the reason large segments of the public here do not support the NATO operation in Afghanistan.
and this attitude problem is summed up a little later:
Mr. Gates’s assessment was an unusually candid acknowledgment from a senior member of President Bush’s cabinet that the war in Iraq had exacted a direct and significant political cost, even among Washington’s closest allies.
Well how about that. If you'll recall, this was one of the main contentions John Kerry made in his campaign against Bush 4 long years ago,
when he stated, as early as January 2003, that
it's high-handed treatment of our European allies, on everything from Iraq to the Kyoto climate change treaty, has strained relations nearly to the breaking point.
Later, once the campaign got going into GE mode- Kerry got really blunt and said that some foreign leaders had basically told him:
"You've got to beat this guy, we need a new policy."
Kerry was later ridiculed for this statement and suggestion all over the rightwingnutosphere, but by no one more prominent than Deadeye Dick Cheney himself.
However, the situation with the lack of support from our allies was so bad, that even the Brookings Institution was forced to admit in that hot summer of 2004:
....with the more realistic, and still meaningful, standard of getting 20,000 more western troops to help in Iraq (and/or Afghanistan), Kerry may well be right...
...A Kerry administration could probably find more allied help in Iraq on other matters too, such as greater economic aid to the new government and increased military training. http://www.brookings.edu/...
And of course, an actual poll, practically on the eve of the election confirmed Kerry's view - where it was found an overwhelming majority of our allies preferred Kerry replace Bush as president, by the overwhelming score of 30 to 3 (out of 35 nations)
So here we are, nearly 5 years later, and SOMEBODY in this maladministration finally admits publicly, that not only do we need help, but that help is in short supply, and that specifically, Iraq itself IS the problem in getting that help. What is somewhat amazing is how Gates reveals the strategy by which the administration intends to deal with this PR problem:
In a public diplomacy strategy somewhat unusual for an American defense secretary, Mr. Gates said he would speak directly to the people of Europe, and not to their governments, “in an effort to try and explain why their security is tied to the success in Afghanistan and how success in Afghanistan impacts the future of the alliance.”
Ya got that Europe? Your leaders are too inept at explaining why you need to support us, and you are obviously too dense to let them persuade, so let us do it for you.
You may now file this under "smash your head against a wall".