Amy Goodman: The Catastrophic Legacy of Donald Rumsfeld

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http://www.alternet.org/story/49109/

The Catastrophic Legacy of Donald Rumsfeld

By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!. Posted March 12, 2007.

In this interview, the author of a devastating biography of Donald Rumsfeld covers how the former defense secretary was loathed by the first Bush president to how Rummy layed the groundwork for torture in Gitmo and Iraq.


The public scrutiny of Rumsfeld culminated in his resignation last year after the Republicans lost control of Congress. Rumsfeld: His Rise, Fall, and Catastrophic Legacy, a new book by investigative journalist Andrew Cockburn goes behind the scenes to reveal never-before told stories about Donald Rumsfeld. Relying on sources that include high-ranking officials in the Pentagon and the White House, it chronicles Rumsfeld's early career as an Illinois congressman to his rise in the Nixon White House. From his tenure as CEO of pharmaceutical company G. D. Searle to his decisions as Defense Secretary in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Amy Goodman: We turn now to a new book by investigative journalist Andrew Cockburn, which goes behind the scenes to reveal never-before-told stories about Donald Rumsfeld, relying on sources that include high-ranking officials in the Pentagon and White House. It chronicles Rumsfeld's early career as an Illinois Congress member to his rise in the Nixon White House. From his tenure as CEO of pharmaceutical company G.D. Searle to his decisions as Defense Secretary in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Author Andrew Cockburn, joins from us Washington, D.C., writer and lecturer on defense and national security affairs and author of five nonfiction books. ... As we talk about Scooter Libby and whether he was the fall guy for a higher-up, namely Vice President Dick Cheney, why don't we start off by talking about Rumsfeld's relationship with Dick Cheney?

Cockburn: Well, it's a very -- you know, it's a key relationship in the history of our times. It goes back to the Nixon White House, when Cheney went to work for Rumsfeld, when Rumsfeld first moved over there from the Congress. And he was regarded in those days by anyone who encountered them as very much Rumsfeld's flunky. And he rose with Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld put him out to pasture when he went off for a job in Europe for a couple years, but then brought him back as his deputy in the Ford White House.

But then, actually, interestingly, I discovered, to my surprise, that during the years in the relative wilderness for Rumsfeld, when he was out of office and decided to run for president, which he always thought he was the person most fitted for that job, in 1988, he called on Cheney and said, you know, "Report for duty, Cheney." And Cheney, by this time, had his own political career and refused. And Rumsfeld took tremendous umbrage at this and went into a deep sulk and actually wouldn't speak to Cheney for some years. And then, of course, the partnership was reforged with disastrous effect this time around.

Goodman: And what about Rumsfeld's relationship with George Bush, Sr.? Why did the President, the former president, dislike Rumsfeld so intensely?

Cockburn: Because it goes back to -- they were basically rivals, first of all, at the court of Richard Nixon, because they were each sort of proteges of Nixon, and each found ways to court Nixon's favor. But then, in the Ford administration, they were rivals for the slot. They both wanted to be picked by Ford to run with him in 1976. And Bush suspected, entirely correctly, that Rumsfeld had sabotaged his chances by getting him made head of the CIA, which was thought -- I mean, wrongly, as it turned out -- but was thought to have politically neutralized Bush for the rest of his career.

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1. He's jacked up the military for a generation

One of our major problems in Iraq has been the culture of "transformation," which is to say replacing uniformed troops with civilian contractors. Rumsfeld so ingrained that into the military culture that every officer looks for ways to "transform" his unit or command, to get that bullet on his annual evaluation report.

The upshot is, we're less mobile and more prone to sit on big bases behind concrete barriers, since you can't expect the civilian employees to go out into the field. Plus, everything costs ten times as much, on the dubious theory that it'll be cheaper than paying the pensions and healthcare of retired soldiers.