Known knowns of Rumsfeld’s reign

By His Own Rules: The Ambitions, Successes and Ultimate Failures of Donald Rumsfeld
By Bradley Graham
PublicAffairs, $35 (£16.99)

On the eve of the 2006 congressional elections that handed the Republicans a thrashing over Iraq, Donald Rumsfeld finished an options paper on the war for President George W. Bush. “It is time for a major adjustment. Clearly, what US forces are currently doing in Iraq is not working well enough or fast enough,” wrote the then defence secretary.

Mr Rumsfeld had – belatedly – realised that the war was going badly. With Iraq on the brink of civil war, however, Mr Bush had already planned a course correction. He started by firing Mr Rumsfeld.

Bradley Graham, a reporter for the Washington Post, has set out to explain how this former Navy pilot, congressman and White House chief of staff – a man “once considered among the best and brightest of his generation” – ended up becoming the most controversial defence secretary since Robert McNamara.

Looking back over the record, you could argue that there was “old Rumsfeld” and “new Rumsfeld”. As a young congressman, Mr Rumsfeld was instrumental in passing the Freedom of Information Act, out of concern that President Lyndon Johnson was misleading the public about the Vietnam war. The same complaints would later be levelled at him over Iraq.

Following several government jobs, including serving as secretary of defence under Gerald Ford, Mr Rumsfeld briefly entered the 1988 presidential race before dropping out for financial reasons. When he returned to the Pentagon in 2001 after a successful business career, he was touted as the man who would transform the military, which Mr Bush believed had wrested control from the civilian leadership under Bill Clinton. But he soon appeared on the ropes as Congress and the senior brass railed against both his proposed weapons cuts and his abrasive manner.

His fortunes were revived when al-Qaeda struck on September 11 2001, transforming him into a war secretary and media darling. Within five years, he had antagonised practically everyone in Washington, losing several close friends along the way.

Graham provides a litany of reasons for Mr Rumsfeld’s failure. The Pentagon did not prepare for post-invasion Iraq. His arrogant rhetoric became a public relations nightmare for the White House. When serious looting broke out in Baghdad, for example, Mr Rumsfeld quipped that “stuff happens”. After a soldier complained about a lack of armour for vehicles in the war zone, Mr Rumsfeld shot back: “You go to war with the army you have . . . not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time”.

Always happy to underscore how quickly the US had toppled the regime of Saddam Hussein, Mr Rumsfeld was too slow to recognise that the US faced a stubborn insurgency in Iraq, and not just a bunch of “dead enders” as he termed the anti-US forces. He also faced a slew of other complaints, including his handling of the Abu Ghraib scandal. His ultimate downfall, however, was linked to his reluctance to boost US troop levels in Iraq, which the White House believed through 2006 would be necessary to stamp out the insurgency.

While Graham paints a vivid picture of Rumsfeld’s turbulent tenure, readers familiar with the literature on the Iraq war may feel underwhelmed. He provides few new facts, and even the eight interviews that Rumsfeld granted generate little insight. Asked about his regrets, for example, Mr Rumsfeld replies disdainfully, “Oh, that’s the favourite press question: What was your biggest mistake?”

One area Graham could have explored more is the relationship between Mr Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, his friend of four decades. We learn interesting snippets, including the fact that their friendship soured for several years after Mr Cheney declined to endorse Rumsfeld’s bid for the Republican presidential nomination. But the book never penetrates the veneer of what is arguably one of the most important political relationships in modern US history.

Graham’s ultimate conclusion is damning: that “hubris and miscalculation, obstinacy and mismanagement, bad advice and bad luck” brought down a man who personified the “arrogance and misjudgments of the Bush administration”.

By the time he left office, few would speak up for him. Even Peter Pace – the marine general who as chairman of the joint chiefs was sufficiently close to Mr Rumsfeld for Robert Gates, current defence secretary, to refuse to nominate him for a customary second term – weighed in after his retirement. “I’m not an apologist for Secretary Rumsfeld,” he said. “He’s a son of a bitch. And I told him that.”

The writer is the FT’s Pentagon and intelligence correspondent