Rumsfeld Remixed
I know that history is usually written by the victors, but don’t they at least let the ink dry before the revising begins. The Pentagon has deleted Rumsfeld remarks mentioned in the new Woodward book.
The Pentagon deleted from a public transcript a statement Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld made to author Bob Woodward suggesting that the administration gave Saudi Arabia a two-month heads-up that President Bush had decided to invade Iraq.
At issue was a passage in Woodward’s “Plan of Attack,” an account published this week of Bush’s decision making about the war, quoting Rumsfeld as telling Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to Washington, in January 2003 that he could “take that to the bank” that the invasion would happen.
The comment came in a key moment in the run-up to the war, when Rumsfeld and other officials were briefing Bandar on a military plan to attack and invade Iraq, and pointing to a top-secret map that showed how the war plan would unfold. The book reports that the meeting with Bandar was held on Jan. 11, 2003, in Vice President Cheney’s West Wing office. Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also attended.
And when they get called on it, as usual the Bush administration hands us some half-assed excuse/explanation.
Woodward supplied his own transcript showing that Rumsfeld told him on Oct. 23, 2003: “I remember meeting with the vice president and I think Dick Myers and I met with a foreign dignitary at one point and looked him in the eye and said you can count on this. In other words, at some point we had had enough of a signal from the president that we were able to look a foreign dignitary in the eye and say you can take that to the bank this is going to happen.”
The transcript made it clear that the foreign dignitary Woodward was discussing was Bandar, although Rumsfeld would not say that. “We’re going to have to clean some of this up in the transcript,” Rumsfeld said in the omitted passage. “We’ll give you a — I mean you just said Bandar and I didn’t agree with that so we’re going to have to — I don’t want to say who it is but you are going to have to go through that and find a way to clean up my language too.”
In other words “We’re going to have to go back and change what I said then to match up with what we’re saying now.”
Jeez. Restoring integrity and honesty to the oval office. Oh yeah. Right.