At war with Donald Rumsfeld

welcome to uncommon knowledge I'm Peter Robinson born in 1932 in a Chicago suburb Donald Henry Rumsfeld has served as a pilot in the United States Navy as a member of Congress from Illinois as ambassador to NATO under President Nixon as White House chief of staff and then Secretary of Defense the youngest Secretary of Defense in history under President Ford as chief executive officer and chairman of the pharmaceutical corporation GD Searle & Company and as Secretary of Defense once again and this time as the oldest Secretary of Defense in history under president george w bush now chairman of the rumsfeld foundation mr. Rumsfeld his author of the new book known and unknown which as we sit here taping today is number one on the New York Times bestseller list would that be the first good item you've ever received in the New York Times don't you know it's driving them crazy the proceeds from this book go to whom they go to the troops and their families and to the children and to the wounded and to the children of the Fallen you have a book here of some 800 pages it quotes extensively from memoranda and other documents if I reading a paragraph say hmm I wonder what the wider context was what do I do even go to a website we've digitized a major fraction of my archive and it's Rumsfeld calm and you can go and go from the quote to the end note write to the document and read the entire document that's in there these are documents that in many cases I wrote other people wrote and and what they do is they tell the story they explain what how decisions are made what was going on what was the back-and-forth and I think they a person seriously interested in government and history will be able to go in there and actually come away with a sense of the complexity of the issues and the decisions this is the title of the book is known and unknown and this of course comes from your remarks which instantly became famous at one of your press conferences well you go ahead and explain what you said well I basically said the truth that there there are known knowns the things we know we know there are known unknowns the things we know we don't know but there are also unknown unknowns the things we don't know we don't know right and they're the dangerous ones they're the ones that can get you and what one of the aspects of the book I found striking is that so much of it the terrorist attack of 9/11 is unprecedented the notion on November 10th the terrorist might fly airliners into buildings was an unknown unknown it simply wasn't in anyone's consciousness it wasn't a thought much of the book is is groping toward what can we know what should we be worrying about and watching large organizations cope with that known and unknown on let me quote you mr. secretary I remember observing to those with me early that afternoon you're in the Pentagon an airplane has struck on 9/11 I remember observing to those with me early that afternoon that America's prior history and responding to terrorism had not been effective and you and you you put down here a litany letting Libya's Muammar Qaddafi offer his role in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 the first World Trade Center attack in 1993 the plotted assassination of George HW Bush by Iraqi agents the same year America's retreat under fire Mogadishu in 93 the Khobar towers bombing in Saudi Arabia in 96 the East Africa attacks on the East African embassies in 98 the 2000 attack on the USS Cole you name their terrorist attacks that took place from during every administration from Ronald Reagan to Bill Clinton it's not a partisan common it's a comment about the United States and its and its what its level of conscious why was the record so appalling until that moment on 9/11 well it didn't happen all at once in most of it was outside the United States and in no instance was anything alike 3,000 people killed innocent men women and children it's the old story about frogs in a in a water and and if you turn the heat up just a little bit at a time they end up dying but they never jump out right whereas if they jump in something hot they'll jump out and this happened over a sustained period of time we got adjusted to the changes in temperature if you will and and it was to our great misfortune that that we we had that failure of imagination we didn't anticipate that what we might have anticipated Afghanistan we attack on October 7th this is just weeks after 9/11 and by December 16th you're able to make the first of your many visits to Afghanistan - it liberated Afghanistan as you say from Grant from at least grant on the military forces of the United States have depended on mass and materiel and in Afghanistan you and those working with you planned and executed the projection of power halfway across the globe over turn two sitting up we'll talk in a moment as we must about things that went wrong but it's worth noting that this was an astonishing operation how did you how did the Pentagon pull that off when it ran against so much of the grain of a hill of American military tradition I think a lot of credit goes to general Frank's to dehl daily general daily who was head of the special forces people to George Tenet because of this very close relationship that was developed between our special forces our combatant commander and the Central Intelligence Agency and because we had the advantage of some militias on the ground the Northern Alliance forces that had been fighting the Taliban for years and been notably unsuccessful and the combination of all of that creatively leveraged everything that needed to be leveraged for success and I don't think there ever was a time when a major military operation used special forces as the spear point where they were what was used to accomplish it and it was thanks to the Northern Alliance and and and they they did a lot to win but it was the combination of our Air Force our naval power and the ability to put people on the ground special operations people who could use late pointers on the Taliban on the al-qaeda and bring in air power to to move them out and then the militias to occupy the ground and how did the speed the agility the lethality of that attack in Afghanistan conditioned thinking about Iraq oh I don't know that it did you didn't know notably different situation we didn't have the indigenous forces like the Northern Alliance or the Pashtun tribes on the south and militias on the south been helped Saddam Hussein had a formidable sized army which was not the case with the Taliban they had an army but it was not anything like Saddam Hussein's quite different circumstance I mean it was much more conventional the Iraq effort Baghdad Falls three weeks after the invasion a couple of days later looting begins things things things looting didn't begin a couple of days later as soon as any portion of the country was was defeated looting began looting you're tuning in Baghdad excuse me sorry but in one regime to another regime right and was a period of disorder you could go to World War two and look what happened in Germany it was it was savagery so looting and disorder so to play can you get me as a layman what's the what's a kind of concise summary of what went wrong from the ball fall of Baghdad until the surge in 2007 and can you summarize what what would a student say ecology the student well if you read the book a student would read the book and and you would see on the book and on the website all kinds of discussion of just that to start with Saddam Hussein released something like a hundred thousand people from his prisoners a second the Sunnis that were going to lose control of the country to the Shia in terms of majority right immediately began trying to form a party of return to take back the government Saddam Hussein call for jihad and men brought in a bunch of jihadis from through Syria through a ram through North Africa and other countries neighboring countries and the Sunnis were concerned about the way things were going and al-qaeda got in there and began its process of working with the Sunnis and at least for a period until the awakening in 2006 early 2006 that began the the insurgency grew which had not been fully predicted by the intelligence community yeah let me quote you again known an unknown quote while the attraction of foreign jihadists to the conflict in Iraq was possible the fact is that our intelligence agencies failed to warn of the possibility we would discover more gaps in intelligence it turned out the Iraqi infrastructure was not in serviceable condition it turned out that the Iraqi army did not remain in hole units capable of being used for reconstruction it turned out that the Iraqi police was not a trustworthy professional force close quote WMDs this litany here's where are these kinds of intelligence failures to be expected because intelligence is a very hard on certain business or was this a failure that that within your wide range of experience in the federal government lay outside the norm how do you how do you assess this well I've been around this business of national security things for quite a while and and I do discuss it in the book first of all it's a very tough job intelligence gathering second you're dealing with closed societies and and third things change and some are not knowable you just don't know them and now we probably could have had a better read on the infrastructure than we did I mean that's something that Saddam Hussein had been denying the infrastructure and it was much more fragile their electric grid and things like that maybe that might have been knowable how the ax surgeon C would evolve I don't think was knowable and George Kennan tenant talks about this in his book and and said if they thought that was a big problem they would have put it in the executive summary and didn't and right now but I've seen intelligence shortfalls like that throughout my career or you know decades why because tough it's tough work it isn't you can't expect that you're gonna have perfect information and and which is I suppose why Eisenhower said the plan is nothing planning is everything and if you know that you have to plan and it could be very valuable planning but when you make first contact with the enemy the plan goes out and you begin to adapt and and adjust to the the things that the enemy has a brain and he starts doing things differently so you everyone said that you didn't feel let down by the CIA no I didn't at all okay it's a tough business so but later comes it's easy to blame and criticize know that what everyone's done 20 20/20 hindsight no I think they have a darn tough job and generally they do a pretty good job okay now however later on we've got again I'll quote you known and unknown after a few in the CIA alleged that some policy officials had politicized intelligence in 2004 I have to say I found this one the most staggering assertions in the book in 2004 I Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld I asked not to receive my daily oral briefings from the CIA the Central Intelligence Agency had become so unreliable as a political matter that the Secretary of Defense of the United States said keep him away from me there uh this was being reflected in the press Daniel Dresner in the New York New Republic 2003 quote the CIA is an open revolt against the White House the earth first saw first of all in answer to your suggestion there studies have been made and there is absolutely no truth to the I think was the 9/11 Commission that looked at this Larry Silberman's Commission well the Rob's elbrun Commission wherever yeah and there's no truth to the idea that that the administration the Bush administration tried to politicize the intelligence I don't think there's anyone who will say that all I'm selling or anything about it right and and I CIA was accusing the administration well no when you say the CIA some person in the CIA was saying things like that but I mean you could find some person in the State Department or the Defense Department or in the CIA or anywhere and Congress will say almost anything and they tend not to be the people at the top levels but but the short answer is that the Independent Commission found that was not the case now just to correct the record I had a terrific CIA briefer and it went on fine and then they changed that person to another person and I had nothing against that person but I started reading in the paper that Pete somebody in the CIA was leaking to the press the either the questions that were being asked by Bush administration officials not me as right out but others the questions they were asking or the questions they were not asking and I said to myself gee I'm not sure that's a good idea for for them to be doing that therefore I think what I'll do is I'll read the CIA materials every day and not have a briefer if they're gonna go back and report who's asking what and then they're gonna leak it to the press I don't want anything to do with it but I think maybe I'll just get read the materials and have someone on my staff ask the questions that if I there questions I think they ought to ask okay weapons of mass destruction you the notion that the Bush administration politicized intelligence nonsense no evidence absolutely fault no one has a shred of evidence to suggest that that's the case Larry Silverman has has said in fact I interviewed Larry Silverman judge Silberman who was a still Burman of the Silberman Raab Commission and he could said that is a slander all right Karl Rove in his memoir says that perhaps his bitterest regret is failing to go on the offensive against the charge that they had politicized the intelligence this whole notion Bush lied people died that he lied us into the war and karl rove says that over in the white house they made the decision they weren't going to go into it it would look defensive as karl rove is exactly right well that's the question was this a terrible mistake it was it was it was a mistake on everyone's part and it's a shame so the president united state resident of the United States needed needed to carry the American people with him through those charges no no no no we already talked about the way CIA some that CIA were leaking quote news stories known and unknown repeated the widely believed canard that the State Department had been cut out of post-war planning the stories bore the unmistakable fingerprints of Powell's top aides close quote mm-hmm you've got CIA leaking to such an extent that you're protecting yourself against being implicated in these leaks you've got the Secretary of State's top aides leaking I can't know where they get it looked like it's your look like it yeah yeah well it this looks like it and I told my people we will not leak it's not professional it's not fair to the president it's not fair to you how does that work how does it work do you a secretary of state of defense get on the phone of course there are deep historical and institutional reasons why defense and state are at odds and have been under various different secretaries going cap Weinberger Torrey it goes way back right but do you get on the phone and say : what the heck is idea you did all right in person mm-hmm all right without satisfaction I kept on all right and I don't suggest the cold pilot was doing it no no but but you see below his top aide all right it's just the feeling this is no surprise to you the war is not going as expected the president is defensive before this notion that he lied people died and the administration itself appears to be in in disarray people mm-hmm I'm trying to grasp here just I'm thinking again of this I'm thinking of the Princeton senior as you were in 1954 when Adlai Stevenson gave that speech that so inspired you what is the lesson here what is the hall I think there are a lot of lessons here I think I think that for one thing it's it's about time that we recognized that the institution's we're dealing with were fashioned in the 1940s the late 1940s in the Truman administration mm-hmm I mean that's where National Security Council is CIA National Security Council the old USIA all of those mechanisms were designed at the inflection point between the end of World War two in the beginning of the Cold War we're now in the Information Age we're now in the 21st century they've served us reasonably well for 50 years it's time it seems to me to have another Hoover Commission like existed in me and give bipartisan group of people to sit down and look at these things same thing was the international institutions the United Nations NATO the World Bank the IMF all of those were fashioned in the same period after World War two two more personalities here that you write about one Paul Bremer who was head of the Coalition Provisional Authority and you take after him for moving slowly particularly with regard to giving authority to Iraqis themselves you are I'm quoting nonono most troubling was that Bremer proved reluctant to cede any significant authority to the Iraqis close quote Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard who likes you and enjoys this book and wrote a wonderful review of the book included though his feeling that I don't know I'm quoting Fred Barnes Bremer created the Iraqi Governing Council to advise him in May 2004 a year after Bremer arrived the IGC names Ayad Allawi prime minister in 2005 this is less than two years after he rise there's a full-fledged Iraqi parliament quote Fred Barnes that strikes me as a reasonably fast transition close quote mm-hmm well I'm first of all let's say this about Gerry Bremer no he's an able person he was willing to take on that tough job and a lot of good things happen under his tenure at CPA at the Coalition Provisional Authority there is no question but that we differed as to the pace at which things would happen and if you look in my book I discussed the fact that most of the things I say about Bremer space came out of Bremer's book I use his own words he was very reluctant to give authority he didn't think they could manage Authority very well he said that in his book my attitude was and I know the State Department didn't would greet with Bremer that they wanted to go at a slower pace they connected for some reason the idea of a legitimacy of the government with a slower pace my attitude was that you gain legitimacy by how well you perform and if you don't perform well and you get changed and so so I try to discuss it in a analytical way and and there were differences I also think there was a lot in this person's in my reading you're extremely respectful I wanted pretty nearly everybody except Nelson Rockefeller and there you little you didn't get along well with Nelson Rockefeller that's a separate program in other words you're not out there's no this is a book that yeah and and tend for people to to better understand government and and and the history of what actually took place which is why there are hundreds of documents on the website that support what's in this book one more one more person National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice quoting you known and unknown rice seemed to believe that it was a personal shortcoming on her part if she had to ask the President to resolve an interagency difference close quote now I believe it's plausible on the evidence just of this conversation to say over there at the Pentagon we have a tough smart hard-working Secretary of Defense we have a capable person in Iraq and the person of Paul Bremer and colon Powell is a seasoned veteran and a patriot and a three of these people disagree on very important matters why doesn't the national security adviser say fellas we're going to Camp David or we're going to the Situation Room and we're going to have this discussion in front of the president United States the the I don't know why it didn't happen it would have been better in retrospect had it happened they're all honorable people it may very well be that what condi rice was the way she was managing it was exactly what the president wanted I don't know I know she had a very close relationship with the president and that was one of her strengths that that she had a lot of confidence in her mm-hmm and and she dealt with him everyday hours every day and we didn't we were out running departments and doing what we do and totally different sets of responsibilities but but from where I was sitting my impression is that when I met with the president seemed to me he was perfect willing to make decisions if he served him up and there were different opinions he'd say well let's do this instead of that and that he what he was very comfortable making decisions okay but some things just didn't get served up to him that way well last last question I promise about the notion of the function of the administration how decisions got made and let me ask in the guise of giving you two quotations from no no none no I don't I hardly need to keep holding the substance you're already number one on the New York Times bestseller list but I'll do it I'll do it an August 2002 memo from you to Condoleezza Rice that you excerpt in this book and that is undoubtedly in full on your website quote you to Condoleezza Rice it's sometimes happens that a matter mentioned at an NSC meeting is said to have been decided because it elicited no objection that is not a good practice close quote also from known and unknown you in your own words while President Bush and I had many discussions about war preparations I do not recall his ever asking me if I thought going to war with Iraq was the right decision not one person in NSC meetings at which I was present stated or hinted that they were opposed to the decision I took it that Bush assumed as I did that each of us had reached the same conclusion so you really let condi have it because important decisions weren't discussed weren't it made explicitly and yet the president of unit were just assuming I didn't like don t have it at all I said look when whoever's doing the minutes of these meetings it would be a mistake to assume something was agreed to unless it was raised as an issue and discussed and agreed to simply because something was mentioned and then not commented on ought not to be taken as a cent that is what the first thing means right the second thing is disconnected from that and it basically was people have suggested that that certain people in the NSC were for the war or against the war I never heard anyone in the NSC express an opinion for or against it I don't remember the president asking : Powell or condi rice for the vice president or me here's that's just a fears the question yeah lord knows I'm not challenging you on the facts I'm trying to understand I'm trying to I'm groping for lessons here would it have been better if the president had asked I guess what I'm saying is in these decisions where is the president United States why is he permitting this jostling to take fourth there wasn't jostling well between you and : Powell and Paul Bremer well there are always differences of opinion that's there's nothing and that was at a perfectly acceptable level and as you said between Kissinger and Bill Rogers or Kissinger and Schlesinger and Schultz and white Roger and Brzezinski and Vance but there's nothing wrong with that having differences of opinion you expect that in an International Security Council with the thing though is to have those discussions and have them presented in a way that's orderly and then have them decided to the extent they drift there tend to be fought out in the press by people two and three and four layers down and to the extent something can be crystallized and and brought to the president and decided then people salute and say fine from the from the west wing back to the Pentagon 24 years or you have 24 years in some months after your first tour of duty at the Pentagon you return and this is pre 9/11 I'm stepping us back to before 9/11 you take it as your mission to produce defense transformation this is the term of art and you quote I didn't take it as my mission the president gave a speech in the campaign at the Citadel he said precisely what he wanted when he asked me to come into the Pentagon he said that's what I want you to do you accepted the Commission from the present example all your talk and we've got we've got I'm quoting from the speech the President's speech our heavy forces must be lighter our light forces must be more lethal all must be easier to deploy how this starts before 9/11 but you're in office for some six years how much progress were you able to make so enormous enormous tell is described that I was very happy to just if if there nothing else happened movement from the division army structure to the combat Brigade the brigade combat teams is enormous and it enables our country to do things we couldn't even begin to do under the determine and maybe as a layman understand why well you're able to to move around and and almost interchange as as replaceable elements that are fully capable that are much smaller rather than if you wanted a something anything smaller than a division you had to take it out of the division and then take the logistics and all that this sport capability with it which leaves the rest of it useless right so it is enormous what Pete's coumarin general Schoonmaker did second the growing use of and capability of UAVs unmanned aerial vehicles are not an accident we put beef behind that and we increase the number and capabilities of those weapon systems enormous Lee and today as a result we have a capability that that we didn't begin to have we'd gone through eight or ten years where the Defense Department had been drawn down and the intelligence community I should also add that I mean we criticize the intelligence community they'd had their budgets reduced and and that called the bath tub the end of the Cold War all we can relax it's the end of history let's draw down and and then comes 9/11 and what do we have to deal with we have to deal with what we were left with what had happened in the preceding decade during the drawdown now third Special Forces when I came in we immediately began strengthening our Special Forces increasing the numbers adjusting the assignments they have and taking some of their lower tier assignments and assigning them to the regulars forces conventional forces we increase their equipment and and enormous Lee we increase their authorities enormous Lee and and here we are in a world a 21st century and you did that fast because by Afghanistan which happens right away it's months after you take office by Afghanistan you've got units on the ground that have obviously had an enormous amount of room for making their own decisions their own maneuver calling and air strikes and so forth but but the today the Special Forces of the United States of America are enormous ly capable and and represent an a significant asset for our country the surge mm-hmm last big topic for which we'll have time alas what does it say about the Pentagon again what's the lesson here that the surge is developed pretty largely Frederick Kagan who's at the American Enterprise Institute Jack Kane who by then is a retired army chief of staff excuse me vice chief of staff he's retired from the Pentagon what does it say that the surge with which the president of United States announces in January 2000 has to come from outside the Pentagon well we surged if you will increase by some five ten fifteen thousand troops several times earlier the question is why did what the President did and god bless him for doing it have the affected hair and I think there are several answers to that question I was a late comer to the surge skeptical or well I was working with the military people and we talked and there was no one who was recommending that in coming up the chain of command in the second half of 2006 I was constantly go to their website you'll see memo after memo or I say to people do we need more troops do we need fewer troops do we should the troops be doing something differently asking these questions over and over again now no one was recommending that we surge coming up and the military chain the Hadley and crouch in the White House Steve Hadley was national national security adviser and Crouch was the deputy began this process and and I will tell you why it worked I have thought about it a great deal and I and I must say a enormous respect for President Bush deciding to do what he did but the reason it surging didn't help earlier and did help in the last half of 2006 early 2007 is this essentially first of all it's not just the number of troops it's what they're doing right what is their role on the ground and I think that the military commander Petraeus fashioned a role that made sense for that moment second Sadr for some reason went quiet we don't know why no stop making mischief third Maliki's government was maturing and he demonstrated by going into the south and actually going after some of the dissidents which was a a good sign fourth Petraeus had been in charge of organizing and training and equipping the Iraqi security forces and we've gotten up to over 300,000 I think is the number by the time you got to late 2006 they were then for the first time really in a position to cooperate with our military and help out then there is something that's not met a physical but psychological the center of gravity by then had migrated almost away from Iraq towards the United States the Harry Reid the Senate Majority Leader said we've lost the war right oh I see the answer and the Congress was about ready to cut the funds off so you had before I go to that go back one other thing I should didn't mention was there was an awaking among the Sunnis they got tired of the al Qaeda they all kinda were raping their families they were they were taking their businesses and the the Sunnis started saying well we can have a role in the new Iraq and we're tired of al Qaeda we don't want him so that added to all of these other things that came together to make the surge work now what else happened when the president boldly did what he did and Jack knows was the surgeon in January that Keane did have a role in so there's no question about that and but what what happened was it galvanized opinion in the United States here was a president who wasn't looking for a way out he was looking for a way to win and that told the people in the country like magnetic particles oh gosh there's a leader there right and and and that made the ones who were like Biden wanted to divide the country country of Iraq into three parts and and and what's his name Reid said we've lost it all so galvanized opinion in Iraq if you think about it remember magnetic particles and you use a magnet right all of a sudden things started pointing if you if you if people don't know what's gonna happen in Iraq should they be supporting the government of Iraq well if if if you're not gonna win if the United States is gonna pull out why should they and then the President Bush comes out and says by golly we're gonna put more troops in and we're gonna win this thing and all the magnetic particles started pointing towards the Maliki government yeah this had a very positive psychological effect this is this direction is a very important question I'm not sure I can formulate it very tightly or well but the question is so the surge in your view was not a matter of finally getting it right oh no all kinds of so the count let me just put it to you in a counterfactual lasts less less point on the surge if David Petraeus had been commander on the ground from the get-go what would have been different well we might not have had the Iraqi security forces trained and equipped as well as they were because that's what he was diversity was a division leader and he did a very good job then he trained and equipped now I don't know the answer to that question that's a road we didn't go down but but the idea that that you know if if you have a hammer everything's a nail so there's certain people say Oh more troops that's the answer it wasn't the answer there were lots of things that came together to make that work and I think it is a I discuss it in the book at some length I think that the documentation I've supplied on the website supports that and I think it was a brilliant act by president george w bush and he deserves a lot of credit for it alright last question we're running out of time darn it again in the nature of a lesson New York Times Friday this past Friday as we sit here speaking it has a story on the speech that Secretary of Defense your immediate successor Robert Gates gave at West Point and have not had a chance to read it carefully okay oh no no I don't doubt it let me just let's let's see if you don't want to touch this question then we'll set it aside but let me ask the question it's just a quotation from the New York Times quote defense secretary Robert M gates bluntly told an audience of West Point cadets on Friday that it would be unwise for the United States to fight an the war like Iraq or Afghanistan now quotes secretary gates in my opinion any future defensive secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or the Middle East or Africa should have his head examined close quote yeah how do you do all the secretary that did advise him to do that there another an opener second I think secretary Gates is doing generally a good job third eye I don't know what the article said or what first of all you haven't read the let's say newspaper yeah doesn't make it so we know the reality is that I don't believe we have the ability in our country and I wrote a thing called guidelines for using military force in March of oh one and it's on the website and in it I say there are certain things we're not capable of doing and we have to have a a reasonable assessment of what we can do and what we can't do militarily and I don't believe we can nation built I just don't think we can do it we don't the cultures are different around the world the histories are different the circumstances are different and you don't want to create dependencies on the part of other people we can encourage them we can wish them well we can give them a chance and I think Afghanistan and Iraqi people have a chance at having reasonably good futures as they move towards representative systems of government and could even be a model in the region I said a lot I don't know anyone who's suggesting putting large forces in those countries sorry thinking they can they can nation build for them because I don't believe we let me flip the question this truly will be the last question there is a question about the United States and what we're capable of as a question of political will in our institutions Korean War 33,000 deaths and an ambiguous outcome the peninsula's divided to this day Vietnam 55,000 American deaths and we lost Iraq fewer than 5,000 deaths every one of them to be regretted obviously but by historical standards that's a small we've projected our power halfway across the world and within a matter of single-digit number of years there is a new government that has a chance if that is now democratic and has a chance of making a go at it as a democratic nation I would argue that by historical standards there's a pretty good case to be made that that represents a stunning success and yet you go on and get interviewed about known and unknown by Andrea Mitchell and John everybody is treating you like some sort of villain how come where's the hostility why does the nation fail to appreciate what took place well I'm not a psychiatrist so I can't tell you what's in the minds of the people who interview me I think if anyone goes into the website and looks at what actually took place what were the decisions what were the arguments what were the issues what were the pros and cons they'll learn that much of the narrative that's out there is quite different from what actually happened by the people who were there and and we're involved in it and I think that's a useful thing I also think that you need time to pass over things mm to get perspective and and we're fighting and have been the first Wars of the 21st century either wasn't even television in World War two right what are we doing today we've got Facebook and Twitter and 24-hour news and emails and Sony video camps everything happens like this and hey I don't think the the energy IRA scopes of people have adjusted to the glut of information the the alight trips around the world three or four times while the truth is still getting his boots on us as Mark Twain said I think and what does that mean well it means that when somebody writes in Newsweek that that somebody flushed a Koran down the toilet even though it never happened riots occur in three cities and people are killed and weeks later Newsweek writes oh if there was any portion of our article it was we're sorry the problem is that people are already dead that they're sorry for now how do you deal with that well we'll figure out a way as a people we'll figure out a way but we haven't yet and we're still adjusting to it on this this enormous flood of information and and Glatt that's that's honest at every moment a lot of it which is not true a lot of it just comes up and it to get rebutted would take full time to rebut it we'll figure out a way secretary Donald Rumsfeld author of The New York Times number one bestseller known and unknown thank you thank you for uncommon knowledge I'm Peter Robinson thanks for joining us

Channel: Hoover Institution

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Keywords: HooverInstitutionUK, Rumsfeld, defense, Afghanistan, Iraq, war, military, Baghdad, looting, chaos, intelligence failures, CIA, organization

Id: 8NxurwFFHdw

Length: 40min 36sec (2436 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 07 2011