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One of the most memorable moments of memory of Donald Rumsfeld, who died this week at the age of 88, was seeing a US security secretary receiving training in the changing Irish history at Shannon airport.
Returning from a trip to China, we stopped at Shannon for some oil. By telling him that I was contemptuous of not drinking with an Irishman in his country, I convinced Rumsfeld to get involved with journalists and aids.
While Rumsfeld was drinking Irish coffee, the barman described how one of the journalists had sinned by ordering “Black & Tan” – a name given to British police who had been protesting during the Irish Independent War, but drinking in the US. It was an easy moment for a man whom gaffes often put in trouble.
During his tenure, Rumsfeld served in a number of capacities, including congressman, Nato’s ambassador and White House chief of staff Gerald Ford, who later made him Secretary of Defense. After George W Bush was nominated for the same position in 2000, Rumsfeld made history by becoming the largest and most powerful person in the Pentagon – and the only person who has done the job twice.
Bush chose Rumsfeld all because of his security and because as chief executive of GD Searle, a pharmaceutical company, he has gained a good reputation for reforming a large organization, and Bush wants someone to change the Pentagon. But he was thrown elsewhere after the 9/11 attacks, which led to the US capture of Afghanistan and Iraq.
By the time I first covered Rumsfeld in 2004, the Iraq war was almost a year old. The joy that came with the capture of Saddam Hussein was interrupted when major riots broke out across the country.
After being sent off because of the speed at which the US overthrew Saddam, Rumsfeld became the epitome of all that was going on in Iraq, much of which was due to a lack of planning and US military forces.
But even before Iraq reached the pinnacle of deception, it managed to avoid difficult questions with its silly words. In the city of egos, he was known as a man who was determined not to allow himself to be accused.
In a widespread kidnapping in Iraq, the response was: “Freedom and recklessness” and “things happen”. The rebels were “last-dead”. When the soldier asked why the U.S. delayed putting on his Humvees weapons, he replied: “You are going to war with the army you have.” Acknowledging the controversial question-and-answer procedure in Guantánamo Bay, Rumsfeld, who uses the desk, wrote: “I stand 8-10 hours a day. Why is it only 4 hours a stand?”
A former pilot and pilot in Princeton, Rumsfeld was a competitive man. A squash-loving player, he made his assistants play hard football – a type of game that needs to run a little bit to give him a chance – and he can play in his home game after winning.
Although it was difficult to separate the man and the security secretary, Rumsfeld had a charm and intelligence. But he also had a black line that saw him harassing people, including his ambassadors. His skills as a tyrant once led Richard Nixon to describe him as a “cruel tyrant”.
I encountered anger on a trip to North Africa when he annoyed me because of a blog he said, it sounds like he is walking high. When one reporter joked that Rumsfeld was afraid to play me in squash, he mocked: “Why, this thief wants to be the food editor of the Financial Times?” (I asked him Dinner is FT before the trip.) I knew the real reason for his outburst, and I wrote that the military doctor had dispensed sleeping pills. to the press on the plane. He would not let me go with him.
But while Rumsfeld, as a former chief of the drug company, was deeply concerned about sleep-related optics, he did not show interest in his image of helping prisoners in Guantánamo, or that Iraq does not have the lethal weapons that the US said justifies this attack.
One of his most vocal critics was Senator John McCain, who said he “went down in history as one of the worst writers”. He is often compared to Robert McNamara, a security secretary during the Vietnam War, who also joined the security forces. However, unlike McNamara, who later regretted it, Rumsfeld never complained about the Iraq war, which killed at least 500,000 lives and left the country in a state of complete chaos.
Whether Rumsfeld has ever said a secret hearing will remain, in his words, “known and unknown”.
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