oopsies

Donald Rumsfeld’s Claim Of Knowing Where Iraq’s WMDs Were Was Just A ‘Misstatement’

Recalling the CIA’s designation of various ‘suspect’ WMD sites in Iraq, I replied: ‘We know where they are. They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad.’ My words have been quoted many times by critics of the war as an example of how the Bush administration misled the public. … While I made a few misstatements – in particular the one mentioned above – they were not common and certainly not characteristic.

—Donald Rumsfeld, the former secretary of defense, makes a stab at revisionist history in his new 815-page autobiography Known and Unknown, which might as well be called Stuff Happens

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By: Max Simon
On: Feb 8, 2011
Tagged: Books, Donald Rumsfeld, Iraq, Iraq War

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9 Comments

No. 1 · Paul in Canada
I really think he and Dubya should be brought up on war crimes.

Feb 8, 2011 at 4:00 pm · @Reply · Flag
No. 2 · Soupy
The right constantly accuses the left of inventing political correctness. So how do you use the euphemism “misstatement” instead of “a lie”.

Feb 8, 2011 at 4:16 pm · @Reply · Flag
No. 3 · christopher di spirito · Member · 1634 comments
Rummy the Dummy has the classic neocon dead eyes. The heart is beating but, there’s no soul present.

Feb 8, 2011 at 5:20 pm · @Reply · Flag
No. 4 · SouthSideShorty
Name calling, that seems to be what Queerty readers do best. War crimes? Reverse political correctness? If the Bush administration were guilty of one-tenth of the conspiracies leveled against them, they’ have been impeached years ago. Instead they got . . . wait for it . . . here it comes . . . reelected! I guess the American majority just loves it some war crimes.

Feb 8, 2011 at 6:53 pm · @Reply · Flag
No. 5 · B
No. 4 · SouthSideShorty wrote, “If the Bush administration were guilty of one-tenth of the conspiracies leveled against them, they’ have been impeached years ago.”

LOL – with a Republican-controlled congress for most of that time?

Feb 8, 2011 at 10:51 pm · @Reply · Flag
No. 6 · thematics
It took Rumsfeld 800+ pages to explain and excuse himself? He needed a better editor.

Rumsfeld fit ideology to facts instead of making the best use of available intelligence on Hussein’s lies concering WMD and their existence.

Let’s not let Condoleeza Rice out of the discussion. She was always closer to Bush than was Rumsfeld. Her area of expertise and her doctoral dissertation had to do with Russia, not the Middle East.

She, as far as I know, has yet to pen a book. Bristol Palin is working on hers at the moment, so perhaps Condi needs to wait a bit.

Meanwhile we’re spending more on Afghanistan and Iraq than on education and job creation. How long will it take before Obama realizes that we’re not making any progress?

Feb 9, 2011 at 12:44 am · @Reply · Flag
No. 7 · reggie
All the lives lost, all the money spent, all the suffering and heartaches for countless families, and all on his “misstatements”. What a sorry excuse for a human being.

Feb 9, 2011 at 4:31 am · @Reply · Flag
No. 8 · Soupy
Tell me Shorty, if they weren’t guilty, why did the Bush go to lengths of exempting himself and his cronies from future prosecution via a pardon?

Feb 9, 2011 at 8:40 am · @Reply · Flag
No. 9 · Soupy
Avoiding prosecution under the War Crimes Act has been an obsession of this administration since shortly after 9/11. In a January 2002 memorandum to the president, then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales pointed out the problem of prosecution for detainee mistreatment under the War Crimes Act. He notes that given the vague language of the statute, no one could predict what future ”prosecutors and independent counsels” might do if they decided to bring charges under the act. As an author of the 1978 special prosecutor statute, I know that independent counsels (who used to be called ”special prosecutors” prior to the statute’s reauthorization in 1994) aren’t for low-level government officials such as CIA interrogators, but for the president and his Cabinet. It is clear that Gonzales was concerned about top administration officials.

Feb 9, 2011 at 8:41 am · @Reply · Flag