How Rumsfeld misleads and ducks responsibility in his new book
Posted By Thomas E. Ricks
Foreign Policy
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Few people know the ins and outs of the Bush Administration as well as the Washington Post's Bob Woodward, who is flat-out disgusted with the evasions and elisions in Donald Rumsfeld's new book. Here he explains why:
By Bob Woodward
Best Defense guest columnist
On page 527 of his memoir Known and Unknown, Donald Rumsfeld recounts what he says was an exchange on Oct. 14, 2003 with Condoleezza Rice who was then Bush's national security adviser. She apologized for a flap over Iraq policy at the time.
You're failing," Rumsfeld said.
"Don, you've made mistakes in your long career," she replied.
"Yes, but I've tried to clean them up," he said.
Rumsfeld's memoir is one big clean-up job, a brazen effort to shift blame to others -- including President Bush -- distort history, ignore the record or simply avoid discussing matters that cannot be airbrushed away. It is a travesty, and I think the rewrite job won't wash.
The Iraq War is essential to the understanding of the Bush presidency and the Rumsfeld era at the Pentagon. In the book, Rumsfeld tries to push so much off on Bush. That is fair because Bush made the ultimate decisions. But the record shows that it was Rumsfeld stoking the Iraq fires -- facts he has completely left out of his memoir.
(More here.)
Foreign Policy
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Few people know the ins and outs of the Bush Administration as well as the Washington Post's Bob Woodward, who is flat-out disgusted with the evasions and elisions in Donald Rumsfeld's new book. Here he explains why:
By Bob Woodward
Best Defense guest columnist
On page 527 of his memoir Known and Unknown, Donald Rumsfeld recounts what he says was an exchange on Oct. 14, 2003 with Condoleezza Rice who was then Bush's national security adviser. She apologized for a flap over Iraq policy at the time.
You're failing," Rumsfeld said.
"Don, you've made mistakes in your long career," she replied.
"Yes, but I've tried to clean them up," he said.
Rumsfeld's memoir is one big clean-up job, a brazen effort to shift blame to others -- including President Bush -- distort history, ignore the record or simply avoid discussing matters that cannot be airbrushed away. It is a travesty, and I think the rewrite job won't wash.
The Iraq War is essential to the understanding of the Bush presidency and the Rumsfeld era at the Pentagon. In the book, Rumsfeld tries to push so much off on Bush. That is fair because Bush made the ultimate decisions. But the record shows that it was Rumsfeld stoking the Iraq fires -- facts he has completely left out of his memoir.
(More here.)
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1 Comments:
more of the blame game, and useless distraction. As if we need some "paid" "controlled" journalist to tell us what we already knew?
but i understand, they have to keep perpetuating the elaborate show to the population
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