Source: Truthout
Donald Rumsfeld is this generation’s Robert McNamara.
Over 12 years after overseeing and helping to design the 2003 invasion of Iraq – the former secretary of defense is now re-writing his own role in the invasion.
In an interview with The Times of London, Rumsfeld called the Bush administration’s approach to Iraq “unrealistic.”
He was referring specifically to the Bush administration’s goal of toppling a dictatorship and building a model democracy in the Middle East – and he said,
“I’m not one who thinks that our particular template of democracy is appropriate for other countries at every moment of their histories. The idea that we could fashion a democracy in Iraq seemed to me unrealistic. I was concerned about it when I first heard those words.”
The statement is stunning considering that Rumsfeld, along with George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz, was one of the biggest architects and cheerleaders of the invasion that destabilized the region and provided fertile ground for ISIS and other extremist groups to begin their current reign of terror in the region.
But like Robert McNamara did 30 years after Vietnam – Rumsfeld is admitting that the war may not have been such a good idea.
But Rumsfeld isn’t going as far as McNamara did – McNamara admitted that the Vietnam War was “wrong, terribly wrong.”
Rumsfeld’s not saying that the war itself was wrong – he’s just saying that he didn’t think it was possible to rebuild Iraq as a democracy.
And that’s still more than Bush or Cheney have admitted.
Which raises the question – why hasn’t anyone prosecuted Bush and Cheney for the 4,500 American soldiers murdered in Iraq?
It’s possible – as former prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi pointed out on this show last year – take a look.