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Rumsfeld blasts Obama's world image Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld disputes the notion that President Barack Obama has made America more popular around the globe than it was under his former boss, President George W. Bush. Asked on CNN's "State of the Union" by host Candy Crowley whether the U.S. is looked at differently than under his tenure, Rumsfeld replied, “I don't think there's data that supports that.” "He has made a practice of trying to apologize for America," Rumsfeld said of Obama. "I personally am proud of America” Rumsfeld also downplayed Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize. “He had not accomplished...

Dick Cheney just popped up here at CPAC to introduce his old pal and Bush administration colleague Donald Rumsfeld. Fans of Ron Paul turned what should have been a friendly moment before an audience of fellow conservatives into a screaming match and protest action that resembled what a Cheney-Rumsfeld hug at the Netroots Nation convention might look like. Rumsfeld is being given CPAC's "Defender Of The Constitution" award, a concept that apparently rankled Paul supporters in the crowd. Many of them got up and walked out en masse at the mention of Rumsfeld, though some stayed behind in the conference...

The US war effort in Iraq would have been a "disastrous defeat" if president George W. Bush had left Donald Rumsfeld in charge of the Defence Department, John McCain says. The former Republican presidential candidate hit back yesterday over unflattering comments made by Mr Rumsfeld in his new autobiography, Known and Unknown. Reviving a feud between the pair, Mr Rumsfeld describes Senator McCain in his book as "a man with a hair-trigger temper and a propensity to fashion and shift his positions to appeal to the media".

Long-awaited, from-the-hip memoir offers raw, unvarnished look at eight decades of history "If you are not criticized, you may not be doing much." So declares former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in his news book 'KNOWN AND UNKNOWN'. In the book, which streets next week, Rumsfeld details his half-century career in and around the ring -- and West Wing. It is based not only on Rumsfeld's memory but also on hundreds of previously unreleased documents from throughout his career. Now only the DRUDGE REPORT can reveal: # Rumsfeld warned in 2001 of Afghan “swamp” and “not to make a career...

If there was any doubt that Donald Rumsfeld's book would be frank-and-candid narrative of what, in his telling, really happened, here are a few details about what promises to be a tell-all in the tradition of the Washington memoir. First, see above: The dust jacket depicts a fleece-wearing Rummy at his get-away in Taos, a signal that he's detached from the Beltway and has nothing to lose. Then there is the title, "Known and Unknown," a play on his famous formulation about "known unknowns" and "unknown unknowns." That's shorthand for suggesting he's going to reveal more than a few...

Unlike Vice President Dick Cheney, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has been relatively quiet since he left office in 2006. But part of last night's speech got Rumsfeld hot under the collar: When I took office, we had just over 32,000 Americans serving in Afghanistan, compared to 160,000 in Iraq at the peak of the war. Commanders in Afghanistan repeatedly asked for support to deal with the reemergence of the Taliban, but these reinforcements did not arrive. The ever-polite Rumsfeld sent out a press release calling that statement a big fat lie:

Who is to blame for (1) our difficulties in Iraq, (2) the delayed Katrina response, (3) lousy relations between the US and Russia, and (4) Republicans losing the Senate?  Donald Rumsfeld, of course.  At least if you believe Robert Draper, as he writes in the June 2009 issue of GQ. "Former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld has always answered his detractors by claiming that history will one day judge him kindly. But as he waits for that day, a new group of critics -- his administration peers -- are suddenly speaking out for the first time. What they're saying? It isn't...

NEW YORK — There is now enough evidence to try former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for war crimes, Manfred Nowak, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture, recently told "Frontal 21," a German television program. Nowak's statement confirms what human rights and legal organizations have been saying for several years, and spotlights one of the Bush administration's most controversial decisions regarding the use of torture. Nowak's statement follows a bipartisan Senate Arms Services Committee investigation made public in December. In scathing and unequivocal terms, the investigation revealed that Rumsfeld and other high-ranking administration officials, including former National Security Adviser Condoleezza...

On the occasion of the publication of the paperback version of his book, War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism, Douglas J. Feith participated in a conference call this afternoon with a number of bloggers, including FinkelBlog. Feith served as the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy for United States President George W. Bush. He worked closely with the President, Vice-President and Defense Secretary Cheney in formulating US policy on Iraq and Afghanistan. Highlights from Feith’s remarks: * Even though the rhetoric of the Obama campaign was harsh toward the Bush administration on...

Reading former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s op-ed in the New York Times the other day reminded me of John Kennedy’s aphorism that success has a thousand fathers and defeat is an orphan. In this case, Rumsfeld is attempting to claim paternity for the so-called surge and the success we’ve witnessed in Iraq during the last 22 months. The problem is that the reality is at odds with what he is now claiming. It is not that some of the specific claims Secretary Rumsfeld makes in his op-ed aren’t accurate. He is right, for example, about the progress we were...

The release of another previously classified Justice Department memo on the interrogation of terrorists (here and here) has reignited the specious “torture narrative,” propounded gleefully by Bush-administration critics. The narrative holds that the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib was the direct and even intended consequence of a set of executive-branch legal opinions on the status of terrorist detainees and the president’s wartime authority. The New York Times announced in an April 4 editorial that the latest declassified memo leaves no doubt that the “abuse of prisoners” was “calculated policy” rather than “rogue acts.” “When the abuses at Abu Ghraib became...

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Steve Scully: This is a political question in terms of how he gets the nomination, but just from what you have seen, how much support do you think he has among the base of the Republican Party? Roberta McCain: I don’t think he has any. I don’t know what the base of the Repub–maybe I don’t know enough about it, but I’ve not seen any help whatsoever. Scully: So can he then go on and become the nominee of this party? McCain: Yes, I think holding their nose they’re going to have to take him. Scully: Can you explain? McCain:...

With all due respect, this is absurd on many levels. If John McCain is nominated and loses, it is because he doesn’t appeal to enough Americans, including the base that he has repeatedly betrayed (as Thomas Sowell puts it) over a long period of time. The suggestion that McCain and McCain alone is capable of fighting this war, given his experience, seems to be the core of the concern. Let me suggest that VDH and others who make this claim are wrong. McCain never treated Bill Cohen, Clinton’s defense secretary, with the kind of personal animus he showed Donald Rumsfeld....

Rumsfeld Remarks at Churchill Dinner PATH TO VICTORY Refashioning Institutions for the 21st Century Remarks by Donald H. Rumsfeld at the Claremont Institute's 20th Annual Dinner in Honor of Sir Winston Churchill, November 17, 2007.This past year has certainly provided ample entertainment for those interested in politics. The activities of Congress and the unexpected blessing of an extra year of presidential campaigning fill our newspapers, televisions, and blogs. The problem is that this entertainment tends to focus on the petty and the personal, and seems to avoid a serious discussion of the emerging challenges our country and the next...

Editor’s Note: Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld received the 2007 Claremont Institute’s Statesmanship Award in honor of Sir Winston S. Churchill on November 17, 2007, and delivered the following remarks (as released by the secretary, exclusively to National Review Online). This past year has certainly provided ample entertainment for those interested in politics. The activities of Congress and the unexpected blessing of an extra year of presidential campaigning fill our newspapers, televisions, and blogs. The problem is that this entertainment tends to focus on the petty and the personal, and seems to avoid a serious discussion of the emerging...

President Bush has endorsed General David Petraeus's recommendation to begin withdrawing 30,000 U.S. troops from Iraq by next summer. Yet the drawdown would only restore troop levels to where they were before the surge began in January 2007. In the final months of 2006, debate in Washington centered on how fast a reduction from pre-surge levels could occur. The Iraq Study Group recommended that approximately half of the 130,000 troops then in Iraq be withdrawn by early 2008. In marked contrast to that and similar proposals, President Bush is now endorsing a step that would mean a return to the...

Most of the war hawks who stood with President George W. Bush on Iraq are gone or departing, leaving Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney increasingly without much company in trumpeting a steely resolve. And it is Cheney who stands out as the administration's foreign-policy heavy, as Bush combines his war rhetoric with overtures to Democrats who control Congress. Bush's top ally in Iraq, U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair, just paid a farewell U.S. visit. The supportive leaders of Spain and Italy are long gone. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld resigned under pressure. World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz - one of...

In the last six years, the Department has made great strides in modernizing its forces to address the threats of the 21st century. I. WAR ON TERROR Overall: A multinational coalition has liberated 50 million people in Afghanistan and Iraq, with formation of representative governments and security forces. Liberated 31 million Afghans from Taliban control and destroyed Al-Qaeda sanctuary – conquering elements that successfully fought off the Soviet Union for over nine years – and stood up a Loya Jurga governing council eight months after operations began. Liberated 26.7 million Iraqis from a brutal dictatorship and turned over sovereignty of...

Rumsfeld bids farewell to Pentagon By ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer 10 minutes ago Leaving office, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld bade a sometimes emotional farewell Friday, saying the single worst day of his nearly six years there was when he learned of the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse in Iraq. Rumsfeld choked up briefly while recalling a woman in Alaska giving him a bracelet last August as a reminder of the sacrifices by soldiers of the Army's 172nd Stryker Brigade, who whose year-long tour in Iraq was extended by four months to help try to quell sectarian violence in Baghdad....