Former US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has died at age 88

[stockhausen]

I am reluctant to speak ill of the dead but I find it impossible to mourn his passing.

 

[stockhausen]

I hope you say the same about Blair one day

I probably would, after all his catchphrase was "Extermination, Extermination, Extermination" as I recall

so why make the thread then?

I come to bury the man, not to praise him - as someone once said.

 

[stockhausen]

I know this is controversial. But I liked the guy.

Not his actions. But when he spoke you got the sense you were speaking to the organ grinder.

Did you get to speak to Rumsfeld then? Where and when was that?

By all accounts Rumsfeld was generally accepted as being suitable material for a CEO but not for the world of Politics. I think that Rumsfeld can reasonably be criticised for his failure to foresee the consequences of the US (and UK) actions in Iraq.

Saddam Hussein was an evil, vicious, brutal dictator but the idea that simply removing him and his apparatus of control and not replacing him and it with something was going to lead to a disaster. One should bear in mind that Rumsfeld had been happy to shake hands with Saddam Hussein when the US felt that Iraq could sort out Iran and also just happened to have huge oil reserves.