![\"Rumsfeld\"](\"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/Rumsfeld-1.jpg\")
<\/p>\n\u201cThe only thing tragic about the death of Donald Rumsfeld is that it didn\u2019t occur in an Iraqi prison.\u201d<\/p>\n
Donald Rumsfeld, the former U.S. congressman, aide to several Republican presidents, and two-time defense secretary whose torture-laden tenure and ruinous legacy were defined by his lies in service of an unending war that\u2019s killed at least hundreds of thousands of people, died Tuesday at age 88.<\/p>\n
By the time he was chosen as then-President George W. Bush\u2019s secretary of defense, Rumsfeld had already been a Navy veteran, four-term Republican U.S. congressman, and adviser to former Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford\u2014for whom he had served as defense secretary.<\/p>\n
In the early 1980s, President Ronald Reagan repeatedly dispatched Rumsfeld as a special envoy to Iraq, whose brutal dictator Saddam Hussein was at the time an important U.S. ally. An infamous handshake between Rumsfeld and Hussein led to the transfer of deadly chemical and biological materials from the U.S. and allies to Iraq. Hussein subsequently weaponized the components and unleashed weapons of mass destruction on both Iranian troops\u2014with the assistance of the Reagan administration\u2014and Iraqi Kurds during the genocidal (pdf) Anfal campaign.<\/p>\n
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As Bush\u2019s defense secretary, Rumsfeld\u2014who served as CEO or chairman of companies including General Instrument and Gilead Sciences\u2014recruited an inner circle of former corporate executives to oversee Pentagon operations, including Air Force Secretary James G. Roche (Northrop Grumman), Navy Secretary Gordon England (General Dynamics), and Army Secretary Thomas E. White (Enron). So great was the influence of the arms industry in the department during Rumsfeld\u2019s tenure that one commentator described it as \u201cDepartment of Defense, Inc.\u201d<\/p>\n
Given his passing today, let\u2019s do some of former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld\u2019s greatest hits (add your own below).<\/p>\n
Here he is, in 2002, being asked about his 1983 meeting with Saddam Hussain. Rumsfeld\u2019s \u201cisn\u2019t that interesting\u2026there I am\u201d lives in my head rent free. pic.twitter.com\/h4PifdOe1r<\/p>\n
\u2014 Sana Saeed (@SanaSaeed) June 30, 2021<\/p>\n
An ardent imperialist, Rumsfeld was a leading luminary of the neoconservative movement and a prominent leader of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), whose other members included Bush administration officials such as Dick Cheney, John Bolton, Elliott Abrams, and Paul Wolfowitz.<\/p>\n
PNAC hawks\u2014who envisioned and strategized regime change in Iraq and elsewhere even before 9\/11\u2014lobbied vigorously for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, even though they knew the country had no connection with the September 11, 2001 attacks on the U.S. or weapons of mass destruction. When pressed on this last point, Rumsfeld offered perhaps his most infamous explanation:<\/p>\n
As we know, 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\u2014the ones we don\u2019t know we don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n
In the rushed run-up to invade Iraq, Rumsfeld dutifully disseminated Bush administration lies about Hussein\u2019s nonexistent nuclear program, while laughably asserting that the Iraq invasion had \u201cliterally nothing to do with oil.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is Donald Rumsfeld\u2019s legacy:<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know they have weapons of mass destruction. We know they have active programs. There isn\u2019t any debate about it.<\/p>\n
6 months later, the US invaded #Iraq. pic.twitter.com\/8TRKdlkNd7<\/p>\n
\u2014 Assal Rad (@AssalRad) June 30, 2021<\/p>\n
The invasion of Iraq, at first called Operation Iraqi Liberation (OIL) began in the dark of night with a Navy SEAL raid on two offshore Iraqi oil platforms. The New York Times\u2014which parroted many of the administration\u2019s Iraq lies\u2014hailed this as the first \u201cvictory in the battle for Iraq\u2019s vast oil empire.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rumsfeld predicted a quick and easy war in Iraq. \u201cFive days or five weeks or five months, but it certainly isn\u2019t going to last any longer than that,\u201d he declared in November 2002 with cocksure miscalculation. Although former President Barack Obama officially ended the Iraq War in December 2011, U.S. troops are still stationed there today\u2014and President Joe Biden bombed the country earlier this week.<\/p>\n
When U.S. forces conquered Baghdad, one of the first sites they secured was the Oil Ministry headquarters. Meanwhile, the Iraqi National Museum, which housed priceless ancient artifacts spanning Mesopotamia\u2019s 5,000-year history, was being looted. Thousands of statues, manuscripts, and countless other treasures, some of them among the oldest objects created by civilized humans, were stolen while nearby U.S. troops did nothing.<\/p>\n
\u201cStuff happens,\u201d Rumsfeld flippantly replied when faced with images of the looting. \u201cThe images you are seeing on television you are seeing over and over, and it\u2019s the same picture of some person walking out of some building with a vase, and you see it 20 times, and you think, \u2018My goodness, were there that many vases? Is it possible that there were that many vases in the whole country?’\u201d<\/p>\n
Thousands of U.S. troops would die during the course of the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of the country, along with hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. The latter were practically ignored by Bush officials. When Rumsfeld was asked why the public only hears about the number of American war dead and not about Iraqi casualties, he cooly replied that \u201cwe don\u2019t do body counts on other people.\u201d<\/p>\n
Donald Rumsfeld was war criminal. He didn\u2019t merely \u201coversee\u201d Iraq War. He was an architect, who backed extrajudicial executions and systematic torture at Abu Ghraib, Bagram, Guantanamo Bay and other prisons. He approved torture plans for Mohamedou Slahi and Mohammed al-Qahtani<\/p>\n
\u2014 Kevin Gosztola (@kgosztola) June 30, 2021<\/p>\n
Rumsfeld was also an instrumental figure in the Bush administration\u2019s torture program. He signed off on torture techniques used by U.S. troops at Guant\u00e1namo Bay, Abu Ghraib, and elsewhere\u2014places where prisoners were sometimes tortured to death. He also issued a directive allowing torturers to withhold medical care to prisoners under interrogation who had injuries as serious as gunshot wounds. Later, Rumsfeld would require doctors to certify that detainees slated for torture were certified \u201cmedically and operationally\u201d fit for abuse.<\/p>\n
The torture memo signed by Donald Rumsfeld, 12\/2\/02, authorizing 20-hour interrogations, removal of clothing, the use of phobias, and stress positions for up to 4 hours.<\/p>\n
Note his handwriting at bottom: \u201cHowever, I stand for 8-10 hours A day. Why is Standing limited to 4 hours\u201d pic.twitter.com\/F34zbkJ5HQ<\/p>\n
\u2014 George Zornick (@gzornick) June 30, 2021<\/p>\n
When the Abu Ghraib torture photo scandal broke, Rumsfeld\u2014after outing the courageous soldier who exposed the abuse\u2014lied about what he knew.<\/p>\n
Gen. Antonio Taguba, author of an Army report (pdf) on U.S. torture at Abu Ghraib, said he met with Rumsfeld and other Pentagon brass just before the defense secretary testified to the Senate about abuse at the notorious prison. Taguba, who had seen thousands of photos of detainee abuse, says Rumsfeld asked him if what was happening in the Iraqi prison was abuse or torture.<\/p>\n
\u201cI described a naked detainee lying on the wet floor, handcuffed, with an interrogator shoving things up his rectum and said: \u2018That\u2019s not abuse. That\u2019s torture.\u2019 There was quiet,’\u201d the general recalled.<\/p>\n
#DonaldRumsfeld is responsible for thousands and thousands of deaths and enriching himself in the process. The least we can do is to forever link his name with \u201cwar criminal\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u2014 Veterans For Peace (@VFPNational) June 30, 2021<\/p>\n
Yet Rumsfeld testified before the Senate that nobody in the Pentagon had seen the Abu Ghraib torture photos.<\/p>\n
However, a Senate Armed Services Committee investigation concluded that \u201cRumsfeld\u2019s authorization of interrogation techniques\u2026 was a direct cause of detainee abuse.\u201d<\/p>\n
The senators additionally asserted that it was \u201cunconscionable and false\u201d for leading Bush officials to blame a \u201cfew bad apples\u201d in the military for detainee abuse in order to avoid accountability.<\/p>\n
Neocon #WaronTerror, #Iraq war and #torture #architect #DonaldRumsfeld has passed away. His legacy of death, destruction, murder and abuse will be remembered by those who experienced it. But, his appointment with dawn has come. pic.twitter.com\/v0egPcpMi4<\/p>\n
\u2014 Moazzam Begg (@Moazzam_Begg) June 30, 2021<\/p>\n
While fighting a war purportedly meant to defeat terrorism in some parts of the world, Rumsfeld supported terror elsewhere. Pursuing allies in the so-called War on Terror, Rumsfeld courted dictators including Uzbekistan\u2019s Islam Karimov\u2014who boiled political opponents alive\u2014and the Iranian exile militants Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), a State Department-designated terrorist organization.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/CIA_Recruit_L.jpg\")
CIA personnel wait as President George W. Bush visits CIA Headquarters, March 20, 2001, Langley, VA. Photo by Brooks Kraft – Corbis for Time dcfeed<\/p><\/div>\n
Meanwhile, a Senate Foreign Relations Committee report concluded that Rumsfeld let bin Laden escape in December 2001. The report also said Rumsfeld\u2019s failures ultimately left Americans more vulnerable to terrorism.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t as if Rumsfeld did not understand the real root causes of anti-U.S. terrorism. In 2004, he commissioned a task force to study the subject. It concluded that \u201cMuslims do not \u2018hate our freedom,\u2019 but rather, they hate our policies.\u201d The task force report cited \u201cAmerican direct intervention in the Muslim world,\u201d U.S. support for dictators in countries including Saudi Arabia and Egypt, and, most of all, \u201cthe American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet Rumsfeld remained an unrepentant cheerleader for war and empire until the end. Medea Benjamin, the co-founder of the women-led peace group CodePink who famously confronted the former defense secretary over his war crimes, tweeted that \u201chis legacy of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan lives on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s the day we introduced Donald Rumsfeld as a war criminal at the White House Correspondents Dinner. Of course, he got to eat the nice dinner and we got booted out. Crime pays. https:\/\/t.co\/6OWFL39MPA<\/p>\n
\u2014 Medea Benjamin (@medeabenjamin) July 1, 2021<\/p>\n
\u201cDonald Rumsfeld was a merciless war criminal who presided over systemic torture, massacres of civilians, [and] illegal wars,\u201d tweeted journalist and The Intercept co-founder Jeremy Scahill. \u201cThat\u2019s his legacy and how he should forever be remembered.\u201d<\/p>\n
Daily Beast senior national security correspondent Spencer Ackerman wrote, \u201cThe only thing tragic about the death of Donald Rumsfeld is that it didn\u2019t occur in an Iraqi prison.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the bright side, Donald Rumsfeld gets to shake hands once again with Saddam Hussein AND Nixon.<\/p>\n
\u2014 John Fugelsang (@JohnFugelsang) June 30, 2021<\/p>\n
\u201cDo not mourn the defense secretary,\u201d said Ackerman. \u201cMourn his victims. There were nearly too many to tally, but his Pentagon refused to count anyway.<\/p>\n
BRETT WILKINS, STAFF WRITER, commondreams<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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