A day before election defeat cost Rumsfeld his job, the outgoing defense secretary told the White House: "It is time for a major adjustment. Clearly, what US forces are currently doing in Iraq is not working well enough or fast enough."

The Pentagon confirmed the contents of the note, published by the New York Times, in which Rumsfeld, a leading planner of the Iraq war, outlined several options but endorsed none. It was sent on November 6, a day before voter dismay over Iraq handed control of Congress to President George W. Bush's Democratic opponents.

Among options mentioned by Rumsfeld were reductions in US forces and bases and a recasting of the US goals there. He suggested cutting US bases to just five from 55 by mid-2007.

The presence of 140,000 U.S. troops and the loss of more than 2,800 American lives in the past 3-1/2 years has failed to end bloodshed in Iraq.

Sectarian violence between Saddam Hussein's once-dominant Sunni minority and the newly-empowered Shi'ite Muslim majority claimed a record 3,700 lives in October, the United Nations estimated, and the latest Iraqi data suggested civilian deaths rose by more than another 40 percent last month.

Fifty-one people were killed at a busy Baghdad market on Saturday by a triple car bomb attack, 10 days after the worst attack of the conflict killed over 200 people in the capital.