Rumsfeld Jumps The Shark in Bizarre FT Interview

By MARC McDONALD

In his weekend "Lunch With the FT" interview with Britain's Financial Times
newspaper, Donald Rumsfeld, was stubbornly defensive, as always, about his actions as Defense Secretary in the administration of George W. Bush.

He also jumped the shark in his surreal, bizarre justification for the disastrous Iraq War.

In the interview, one of the ways Rumsfeld defends the invasion of Iraq was by noting the "godawful prisons" that existed under Saddam Hussein.

It appears that Rumsfeld is a man without a sense of irony. Or shame.

This, after all, is a man who was the U.S. Secretary of Defense during the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse scandal.

In fact, in November 2006, the prison's former commander, U.S. Army Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, said that Rumsfeld knew about, and was responsible for, what happened at Abu Ghraib.

In a written statement, Karpinski said:

"It was clear the knowledge and responsibility (for what happened at Abu Ghraib) goes all the way to the top of the chain of command to the Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld."

Rumsfeld, like Bush, still fiercely defends anything and everything that occurred on his watch. Anyone looking for Robert McNamara-style regrets over the Iraq War fiasco will be disappointed with Rumsfeld's stubbornly unrepentant approach.