It’s George’s Fault, Says Don Rumsfeld!

The last time we encountered former Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld he was declaiming that prisoners were not being mistreated and noted that he stood several hours a day without complaining about brutality. The Washington Post has an advance copy of the new Rumsfeld autobiography. In it he charges that President George Bush presided over a national security process that was marked by incoherent decision making and policy drift which impacted the Iraq war. As far as he is concerned, there are no regrets over ousting Saddam Hussein even though over 4,000 American soldiers died in the effort. It was worth the cost according to the man who was responsible for the armed forces. As to charges there were insufficient troops, Don has a response: ‘in retrospect, there may have been times when more troops would have helped.” According to his version, no senior military officer gave him such advice.
Perhaps, my memory is deficient, but General Shinseki, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff argued there was need for over 400,000 troops, not the 140,000 that Rumsfeld argued could handle the task. Of course, General Shinseki was asked to resign for offering such foolish advice. As for the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, Don has an explanation: “looking back, I see there are things the administration could have done differently” about treatment of those placed in prisons. Frankly, I think Don is right, prisoners complained about being humiliated, but was their treatment any worse than what Don got from those unpatriotic liberals who always complained?
I wonder what parents and wives of those who died think about Don’s claim the death of their loved ones was worth the cost?

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