WASHINGTON, Jan. 9 (Xinhuanet) -- The U.S. military acknowledged Monday that Paul Bremer, the former top U.S. civilian administrator in Iraq, had called for a far larger military presence in that country in 2004.

    Pentagon spokesman Larry Di Rita told U.S. media that Bremer made the recommendation in a memorandum sent to U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in May 2004, saying more troops will be needed to effectively fight the insurgency.

    However, he said it was the only time during Bremer's 13 months as head of the U.S. civilian occupation authority in Baghdad that he offered advice on troop levels.

    Di Rita said chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time, Richard Myers, took the advice seriously and consulted with senior military commanders to consider changes.

    But they finally told Rumsfeld that they preferred to stay at the existing level of 18 brigades, or about 145,000 troops, he said.

    "And that was the end of the matter," said the spokesman.

    Di Rita's comments followed Bremer's television interview with NBC Sunday night, in which the former diplomat raised questions about the Pentagon's insistence on a small force even as a fierce insurgency took hold in Iraq.

    He also defended his decision to disband the former Iraqi army after the U.S. invasion in 2003 -- a move which some commentators have branded as one of the biggest U.S. blunders in Iraq.

    Bremer said almost from the start of his 13-month tenure as head of Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, he repeatedly raised concerns about the number of US troops on the ground.

    The former diplomat's stance on U.S. troop levels in Iraq had not been publicly known for a long time, but he caused a stir last October when he told a conference that "we never had enough troops on the ground (in Iraq)."

    Bremer also said he felt the U.S. military is exaggerating the strength of the new Iraqi security forces being trained to replace them. Enditem