Even while George W. Bush served as US president, there were many who expected a spate of books following his presidency that would expose the truth of the Bush Administration, warts and all. Although some books critical of Bush and his government have, indeed, appeared, those written by senior officials have been limited to former CIA director George Tenet's “At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA” and, now, former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld's “Known and Unknown”. Both have been white washes, and Rumsfeld's is the more shocking of the two. Rumsfeld became known during the war for numerous verbal insensitivities. He may be best remembered for saying: “You go to war with the army you have, not the one you want,” as explanation for the lack of equipment, bullet-proof vests and armored Humvees that left Americans shocked once it became public. Despite his literary intention of coming out something of a hero, his book shows only that he had about as much regard for the truth as he did for the fates of the thousands of American troops thrown into the abyss of Iraq. Oddly enough, Rumsfeld has posted on his website formerly classified documents regarding CIA reports on the WMD that Bush and his government used as justification for the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq. Each and every document declares in plain English that information regarding WMD and an Iraqi nuclear program was extremely sketchy and entirely unreliable. “The evidentiary base is particularly sparse for Iraqi nuclear programs”, stated one report. “We cannot confirm the identity of any Iraqi facilities that produce, test, fill, or store biological weapons.” Somehow or another, Rumsfeld and his cohorts twisted the profound doubts of the CIA and twisted into a “slam dunk” case for going to war. Rumsfeld's book only goes to show that facts were of little importance to him and his president. Nor, apparently, were the 5,000-plus American lives and the 100,000 Iraqi lives that have been lost there. __
