Opinion: Out in New Mexico, Rumsfeld opens up, sort of
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According to Lisa DePaulo, Donald Rumsfeld does not do regret.
In a lengthy, ruminating and revealing article that doesn’t read long in GQ magazine, DePaulo explores all kinds of subjects with the controversial former Defense secretary who’s writing a book, reading a ton, planning a new foundation, living a new life, wearing jeans, guarding against coyotes and nursing a nearly blind dog.
The parts of the article that will make the news involve his relationship with President Bush. Do you miss him? ‘Um, no.’ Still like him? ‘I do.’ Are you still close to Colin Powell? ‘No! We’re not close. Never were.’ And the vice president? ‘I still see Cheney.’
He believes Bush will be vindicated someday, much as Harry Truman and Ronald Reagan became, over time, appreciated for their strengths and national security accomplishments. He’s not got much time for the ‘eastern media’ that deals in political caricatures day in and day out.
He says he doesn’t read newspapers very much, but he carries an armload onto the plane.
Rumsfeld actually tried to resign three times. Before the Iraq invasion he wrote out a memo with at least two dozen warnings about what might happen, including not finding weapons of mass destruction. He doesn’t look back much, although his book will be a full life’s memoir about his careers as a Navy pilot, a businessman, four-term Congressman, White House chief of staff, defense secretary and grandfather, not a kiss-and-tell about the Bush years.
He says he’s not bothered by the vilification heaped upon him in recent months for failed war...
strategies. The people who still shout ‘Warmonger!’ at him. The folks who heckled his little grandchildren in the July Fourth parade. ‘It’s a free country. People can say what they want.’
He did receive hundreds of positive letters after his resignation and strangers sometimes thank him. Rumsfeld chuckles when recounting how his face was the standard image for Al Qaeda target practice.
Sure, he has regrets. ‘You’d always wish things were perfect, but they never are. The enemy has a brain. And the enemy watches what our folks do and they adjust to it and...the fact that we were not able to get a division in through Turkey at the outset meant that the Saddamists, today’s insurgents, had free play for a good period of time.’
And what was the hardest time of his life? ‘The hardest time, without question, was being chief of staff to President Ford’ right after Watergate.
And he tells some revealing heart-wrenching stories, the kind of stories, DePaulo writes, ‘that people who despise Donald Rumsfeld might be surprised to hear.’ But they’re off the record because ‘I don’t like to talk about myself.’
Oh, and he bought his wife, Joyce, a mule on the Internet. But they changed his name because Augustus was ‘a little too grand for us.’ Now, he’s just Gus.
--Andrew Malcolm