One of the biggest criticisms of the Bush Administration’s decision to wage war in Iraq — and the leadership of then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, specifically — is that the U.S. failed to fully consider the country’s political climate and the potential for sustained violence following the invasion.
Yeas & Nays has obtained a sneak peak at an interview with Rumsfeld conducted by GQ’s Lisa DePaulo which will appear in the October issue of GQ (the special 50th Anniversary issue appears on newsstands nationally September 25).
It is Rumsfeld’s first extensive interview since leaving the Pentagon in November 2006.
Rumsfeld says that, before the war, “I sat down and handwrote fifteen, twenty, twenty-five things that could be…could go wrong, could be real problems…I wrote down all of the things that could be problems: That we wouldn’t find weapons of mass destruction. That there’d be a Fortress Baghdad, and a lot of people would be killed. Allof this… I read it in a National Security Council meeting. Then I went back to my office–I had handwritten it–and I dictated it and added four or five things. And I think there’s probably thirty items on it. And then I sent it around to each of the members of the National Security Council, to the president and the vice president. So that all of them had in their heads the things that were dfficult, problematic, worrisome, dangerous.”
When DePaulo asks Rumsfeld how the memo was received by President Bush, he responds:
“Um…” A pause. He is carefully choosing his words. “I think it was…appreciated by the president that I took the time to do that.”
And do you think the president-
“Yeah, I thought he read it. Yeah.”
Although Rumsfeld is quick to praise his former boss (“He believes that someday he’ll be vindicated. He believes he’s a lot more intelligent and curious than people give him credit for.”), he also confesses that the two haven’t spoken since Rumsfeld’s resignation.
You still like him?
“I do.”
You don’t talk, though, right?
“Uhhh…I’m trying to think. No.”
Was the last time you talked to him the day you resigned?
He can’t recall.
DePaulo asks Rumsfeld if he misses President Bush. “Um, no,” Rumsfeld replies. (But he also doesn’t miss former Secretary of State Colin Powell: “No! We’re not close. Never were.”)
Rumsfeld also thinks that might still be at the Pentagon had the Republicans won the 2006 midterm elections:
A month and a half after our visit, Reuters would break the story that Rumsfeld gave his final (and apparently third) resignation letter to the president the day before the midterm elections, though Bush chose not to announce it until the day after, infuriating many Republicans who felt the election could have been won if Rummy had been sacrificed first. In Taos, I asked him if he considered resigning before the elections.
“Uhhh, no,” he replied. “But it was very clear in my mind that if the Democrats won the House or the Senate or both, that it made sense for me to…that it would be best for the department if someone else was there.”
So it could have been different for you if the Republicans had won?
“Mmm-hmm.”
