Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, that master of the tart zinger, now concedes he went too far with some. The man who more than any other in the Bush administration personified bravado and self-assuredness has come to regret saying “Stuff happens” about the early looting in postwar Iraq. He admits his quip about “old Europe” — meaning Germany and France — not supporting the war was hardly deft diplomacy.
As for declaring, as he did in the first weeks after the invasion of Iraq, “We know where they are,” referring to suspected stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction — well, Rumsfeld would like to take that one back too.
But Rumsfeld still can’t resist — in a memoir due out next week — taking a few pops at former Secretaries of State Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice as well as at some lawmakers and journalists. He goes so far as to depict former President George W. Bush as presiding over a national-security process that was marked by incoherent decision-making and policy drift, most damagingly on the war in Iraq.
Much of Rumsfeld’s retrospective reinforces earlier accounts of a dysfunctional National Security Council riven by tensions between the Pentagon and State Department.
But speaking out for the first time since his departure from office four years ago, the former Pentagon leader offers a vigorous explanation of his own thoughts and actions and is making available on his website () many previously classified or private documents.
Sounding characteristically tough and defiant in his 800-page autobiography “Known and Unknown,” Rumsfeld, 78, remains largely unapologetic about his overall handling of the Iraq conflict and concludes that it has been worth the costs. Had the government of Saddam Hussein remained in power, he says, the Middle East would be “far more perilous than it is today.”
Addressing charges that he failed to provide enough troops for the war, he allows that, “In retrospect, there may have been times when more troops could have helped.” But he insists that if senior military officers had reservations about the size of the invading force, they never informed him.
The book, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post ahead of a Tuesday release date, covers Rumsfeld’s entire life, including earlier stints in government and a long career in business. But more than 60 percent of the book deals with his controversial six years as Bush’s defense secretary.
