FORMER US president George Bush asked his defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, to draw up plans for the invasion of Iraq just two weeks after the atrocities of September 11th, 2001, Rumsfeld reveals in Known and Unknown: A Memoir, which will be released on February 8th.
The Bush administration’s false claim that Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the 9/11 attacks was believed by nearly 70 per cent of Americans.
Rumsfeld took his title from his own allegation that Iraq intended to provide weapons of mass destruction (WMD) to terrorists: “There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don’t know we don’t know,” Rumsfeld told a press conference in 2002.
Mr Rumsfeld now says he regrets saying “We know where they are” regarding Saddam’s alleged WMD. None were ever found. And Mr Rumsfeld is sorry he dismissed the European allies who opposed the invasion of Iraq as “old Europe” and “the chocolate-making countries”.
The British playwright David Hare made another Rumsfeld quote, Stuff Happens, the title of an acclaimed play about the Iraq war. Mr Rumsfeld also regrets having excused the mayhem that followed the fall of Saddam: "Think what's happened in our cities when we've had riots, and problems, and looting. Stuff happens... freedom's untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things," he said at the time.
But on matters of substance, Rumsfeld blames his former colleagues in the Bush administration. He fought with secretary of state Colin Powell and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice. It was Mr Bush’s fault for failing to settle disputes between cabinet members.
American troops in Iraq were hopelessly under-manned. “In retrospect, there may have been times when more troops could have helped,” Rumsfeld admits. But he says his commanders never informed him they needed more troops. In fact, Mr Rumsfeld sacked Gen Eric Shinseki, US army chief of staff, after Gen Shinseki told the Senate Armed Services Committee hundreds of thousands of US troops would be needed in post-war Iraq.
Nor does Rumsfeld admit to wrong-doing in the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo. The Senate committee’s inquiry into the treatment of detainees in US custody concluded that Mr Rumsfeld’s secret signing of the infamous “torture memo” on December 2nd, 2002, “conveyed the message that physical pressures and degradation were appropriate treatment for detainees in US military custody”. Rumsfeld forced Maj Gen Antonio Taguba to retire for his critical report on Abu Ghraib.
Rumsfeld writes: “There are things the administration could have done differently and better with respect to wartime detention”. He wishes he had resigned when the Abu Ghraib scandal broke, but blames his old friend, former vice-president Dick Cheney, for failing to involve Congress in regulations on the treatment of prisoners.