The Memoirs of a Hawk

Donald Rumsfeld has just published his memoirs. As I haven’t read it, I can only imagine what selective memories the former secretary of defense to President George W. Bush has included.

I do not think that I personally have the stomach to sit and read a copy. It’s necessary to remember that it was this man, who said — back in 2002, before the invasion of Iraq by part of the U.S. armada — referring to the alleged support by Saddam Hussein of Islamic terrorist movements, “Nobody in the world disputes that the Iraqis have weapons of mass destruction. We all know they have them. A trained monkey knows it.”* In hindsight, as everyone knows, the trained monkey was wrong, unless the monkey had been trained to blatantly lie.

The title of his book is derived from a phrase constantly used by Rumsfeld. Even when evidence indicated that the Iraqi government had not been supporting terrorists, he repeated this classic response: “Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because 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 — the ones we don’t know we don’t know.” What we do know and everyone knows is that this man is an enigmatic and insidious liar who played a fundamental role in the Iraq War.

This hawk of hawks who, along with Dick Cheney, was the architect of the lies that brought destruction to Iraq, now resurfaces with this book he has titled, in its Spanish translation, “What We Know and What We Don’t Know,” in which, even after the truth has been uncovered, he still defends the invasion — which brought so much death and destruction to Iraq — along with the torture conducted by the U.S. military in Iraqi prisons and at the usurped Guantanamo naval base.

According to those who have read the 800 pages of this book, Rumsfeld describes how President Bush invited him to the Oval Office 15 days after the terrorist acts of Sept. 11, 2001, to seek a war plan against Iraq. According to these memoirs, Hussein was threatening to kill the daughters of both Rumsfeld and of Bush, and to this end had reserved $60 million to pay his agents. He has created a novel about an alleged plot by the president of Iraq to assassinate the daughters of both these high-ranking American officials.

Kind and selfless, the knight of war says that when the Abu Ghraib tortures came to light, he offered his resignation to the president so that all the responsibility would fall on him as secretary of defense, and the administration could wash its hands of the scandal that had resulted from such horrible acts. As Rumsfeld says, his magnanimous offer was rejected by Cheney, as well as Bush, and in his place they suggested that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard Myers, be fired.

According to Rumsfeld, the blame for those atrocities that occurred in Iraqi prisons lies with a small group of soldiers who didn’t obey their military commanders. That logic is a constant in the United States. They always say that those on the bottom are guilty of this type of act and not their superiors. If a police officer beats a civilian, he is culpable and not the government for which he works.

The quotes extracted from Rumsfeld’s memoirs by people who have had the opportunity to read it are large and impossible to describe at length in this commentary. But those quotes that I have read so far confirm the personality of this man who, indisputably, has certain undeniable qualities. He is a man who knows how to defend his point of view and who is willing to use any argument to do it, making use of lies, irony and personal attacks.

He was an elected member of the U.S. Congress for several terms and served twice as secretary of defense, once in the administration of Gerald Ford and later with George W. Bush. In other words, his stance as a major hawk put him in the perfect role twice. From there he has been able to fly high, to a position where his decisions have caused much direct and collateral damage. From this position, and once outside it, he lied and lied some more. Now, he continues lying in writing his memoirs.

*Editor’s Note: This quote, accurately translated, could not be verified.