Inside Rummy’s Crusade

http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/20090518_inside_rummys_crusade/

Posted on May 18, 2009

An GQ expose reveals Donald Rumsfeld’s alarming penchant for melding scripture and foreign policy during his time as secretary of defense in the Bush administration. The report also discloses how disliked Rummy was by his peers. “There was exasperation,” one former Bush aide said. “How much more are we going to have to endure? Why are we keeping this guy?”

GQ:

On the morning of Thursday, April 10, 2003, Donald Rumsfeld’s Pentagon prepared a top-secret briefing for George W. Bush. This document, known as the Worldwide Intelligence Update, was a daily digest of critical military intelligence so classified that it circulated among only a handful of Pentagon leaders and the president; Rumsfeld himself often delivered it, by hand, to the White House. The briefing’s cover sheet generally featured triumphant, color images from the previous days’ war efforts: On this particular morning, it showed the statue of Saddam Hussein being pulled down in Firdos Square, a grateful Iraqi child kissing an American soldier, and jubilant crowds thronging the streets of newly liberated Baghdad. And above these images, and just below the headline secretary of defense, was a quote that may have raised some eyebrows. It came from the Bible, from the book of Psalms: “Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear Him … To deliver their soul from death.”

Read GQ’s full report here

Also check out GQ’s slideshow of Rumsfeld Worldwide Intelligence Update covers here

Wikimedia Commons / www.af.mil

Critics say Rumsfeld shared the very traits—arrogance, stubbornness, obliviousness, ineptitude—that drove the Bush presidency off the rails.