YORBA LINDA – Early in Donald Rumseld’s talk Monday at the Nixon library, a couple of critics in the audience offered some feedback.
“The ends don’t justify the means,” shouted a man with a ponytail, possibly referring to the Iraq War, waterboarding or the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.
Read Wisckol’s interview with Rumsfeld about the world at war.
“Bush lied; people died,” added a woman as the ushers quickly moved in to escort the pair outside.
Rumsfeld, defense secretary at the time of the Iraq War, jumped right in, taking the opportunity to defend George W. Bush’s decision to invade.
“Bush didn’t lie,” he said, rebutting accusations that evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was trumped up as a pretext for launching the war.
He ticked off support from CIA chief George Tenet and the speech to the United Nations by Secretary of State Colin Powell arguing the case for such weapons’ existence.
“Hillary Clinton and John Kerry voted for” the bill authorizing the war, Rumsfeld said, before making the case that it was a good decision. “We know that the butcher of Baghdad, Saddam Hussein, is gone.”
Rumsfeld, 80, was in town as part of his book tour for “Rumsfeld’s Rules: Leadership Lessons in Business, Politics, War, and Life.” The volume contains nearly 400 aphorisms including, “Lawyers are like beavers. They get in the middle of the stream and dam it up.”
He was greeted by a standing ovation and clearly enjoyed his repartee with the crowd of about 500, especially once his critics had left. He offered some brief opening comments but spent most of his hour at the lectern fielding questions by bantering with the audience, discussing issues of the day and serving up a steady diet of witticisms.
“As a man once said, I stand by what I meant to say,” went one. “Washington is 60 square miles surrounded by reality,” went another.
He discussed the Benghazi, Libya, controversy, the IRS and the future of China. And he bemoaned the shrinking defense budget.
“The biggest problem I worry about when I go to bed at night … is America’s weakness,” he said, referring to defense cuts and Europe as a model for slimmed-down defense spending. “The signal we’re sending the world is that we won’t be a country that contributes to a peaceful world.”
But he also expressed optimism for the United States, noting the country had survived “a lot worse than today.”
“Is it possible there’s a tipping point?” he said. “Have we reached it? I doubt it. The American people have a lot of fiber.
“The idea that any one citizen cannot make a difference is not true. Each individual can do a lot.”
Contact the writer: 714-796-6753 or mwisckol@ocregister.com
