Rumsfeld Lavished at ceremony

By Daniela Deane
Washington Post
Dec. 16, 2006

President Bush and Vice President Cheney today heaped lavish praise on outgoing Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, part of an afternoon of military pageantry and tribute for the man who was ousted from his job after becoming the face of the increasingly unpopular war in Iraq.

"This man knows how to lead and he did, and the country is better off for it," Bush said at the outdoor Pentagon ceremony for the departing 74-year-old Rumsfeld, the nation's second-longest serving defense secretary and the only man ever to hold the job twice. "There has been more profound change at the Department of Defense over the past six years than at any time since the department's creation in the late 1940s."

Bush called Rumsfeld, who has served as secretary of defense ever since Bush became president, "one of America's most skilled, energetic and dedicated public servants."

Robert Gates, 63, a former CIA chief and Russia expert who has served four previous presidents, is due to be sworn in Monday as the country's 22nd defense secretary.

Bush, speaking about the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, said Rumsfeld's first instinct that day "was to run towards danger." He said the outgoing secretary was at his job in the Pentagon at the time and "raced down smoke-filled hallways . . . to help rescue-workers pull victims from the rubble."

In his own remarks, Rumsfeld called on Americans to spend more on defense, saying that the terrorist enemy could still kill "hundreds of thousands of our people in one nimble, quick stroke."

"Today it should be clear that not only is weakness provocative, but the perception of weakness on our part can be provocative as well," Rumsfeld said. He called the war in Iraq "neither hopeless nor without purpose. It's about doing what's right even when it's hard, especially when it's hard."

Vice President Cheney, who began his career in politics as an intern for Rumsfeld in 1969, called Rumsfeld the "finest secretary of defense this nation has ever had," even though Cheney himself served as secretary of defense during the administration of George H.W. Bush. He described him as the "toughest boss I ever had, the most demanding, the most commanding."

Cheney said the former Princeton wrestler and Navy aviator has an "incredibly sharp eye for detail, almost perfect recall . . . and apparently does not sleep."

Bush announced the departure of Rumsfeld, the architect of the war in Iraq, the day after Democrats captured control of Congress in what was widely viewed as a vote against the conduct of the war. His resignation stunned Washington as Bush had stubbornly resisted calls to dump his Pentagon chief for years despite mounting pressure from within his own party and the ranks of retired generals.

Just a week before the announcement that Rumsfeld was out, Bush declared publicly that he wanted Rumsfeld to stay at the Pentagon through the end of the administration. But his tenure came to symbolize the administration's apparent unwillingness to change a policy that has failed to bring peace to Iraq and has lost popular support in the United States.

In fact, Rumsfeld offered twice to resign during the 2004 scandal over U.S detainee abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad and Bush refused to accept it.

Rumsfeld collected a band of enemies inside and outside the Pentagon during his tumultuous second tenure. As violence in Iraq intensified, he found himself increasingly questioned by generals, lawmakers and others over miscalculations that included not planning adequately for the post-invasion occupation and failing to recognize soon enough the nature of the insurgency there. Several generals, both active-duty and retired, charged that a brusque Rumsfeld tended to brush aside their advice.

With Rumsfeld's departure, most of the top Pentagon civilians responsible for planning the invasion and early occupation of Iraq are gone.

The bipartisan Iraq Study Group, co-chaired by former secretary of state James A. Baker III and former Indiana congressman Lee H. Hamilton (D-Ind.), took a veiled shot at Rumsfeld in their report released earlier this month when it said that incoming Pentagon chief Gates should create an "environment in which the senior military feel free to offer independent advice" to the president and other civilian leaders.

Rumsfeld's legacy at the Pentagon involved two tours, the first lasting just 14 months in 1975 and 1976, when at just 43, he served as the youngest defense secretary ever under President Gerald R. Ford and as a close ally of then-White House chief of staff Cheney.