Rumsfeld's A**hole Status Grows

"I can't quit you, Rummy".

A must read article in GQ by Robert Draper on how Donald Rumsfeld spun and played Bush for the chump. Lest we forget how sick and horrible Rummy's faux alpha dog mentality used to stupefy and exploit the Chimp Boy President really was.

Like any co-dependent couple, though, they needed each other [until Bush dropped him the day after the 2006 elections proving my point]. Not so much "who ruined who?". They were both stubbornly dim and appreciated the deception used by each other.

Rumsfeld's exploitation of the Rapture-livin' Bush: using Old Testament Bible quotes in his daily briefings from the Iraq War:

"The Scripture-adorned cover sheets illustrate one specific complaint I heard again and again: that Rumsfeld’s tactics—such as playing a religious angle with the president—often ran counter to sound decision-making and could, occasionally, compromise the administration’s best interests."

The bullying of Bush: denying troops in the aftermath of Katrina in New Orleans:

"Rumsfeld threw truck-size obstacles in the way of deploying troops to New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Claiming that there’d be problems with 'unity of command,' Rumsfeld was adamant that only the National Guard be sent out—but they were slow in arriving and did little to stem the chaos. Bush snapped at him for the disorder in a meeting about the situation: 'Rumsfeld, what the hell is going on there? Are you watching what’s on television? Is that the United States of America or some Third World nation I’m watching? What the hell are you doing?' Five days after the hurricane hit, Bush told Rumsfeld he had to deploy troops. “If we had put those troops in on Thursday, the narrative of Katrina would be a very different one,” one senior official said."

The former Secretary of Defense was a real asshole. There are many more instances in the article, so be prepared to hit something after you read it.

Donald Rumsfeld has always answered his detractors by claiming that history will one day judge him kindly. Sadly for us who lived through his horrendous reign, that day is never coming.

Source: Daily Beast