Documents Used to Promote Rumsfeld's New Book

Donald Rumsfeld, George W. Bush's Secretary of Defense through 2006, has recently published a memoir, "Known and Unknown." In order to promote his book, he's been making the talk-show rounds, and has created a website that he calls "The Rumsfeld Papers," which includes a collection of "hundreds of declassified or previously unreleased documents." The visitor is invited to browse the documents online, but they appear to be accessible only by searching keywords (if you can find a way to actually browse them, let me know).

The documents cover three administrations: Presidents Nixon, Ford, and G.W. Bush. There are scattered documents from his days in Congress and a special archive for the famous "snowflake" memos that inundated his staff during his years under Bush. With the right sort of indexing and verification this will be an extremely valuable collection, addressing a controversial period in our country's history.

Several journalists have already begun to dig through the memos and policy documents in order to compare them with information available during the early years of our war with Iraq. Jeremy Hammond, in Foreign Policy Journal, revisits the much-criticized decision to disband the Iraqi army in May of 2003. Bush, Rumsfeld, and V.P. Cheney have all claimed not to have authorized the order given by Paul Bremer, despite the fact that he reported to them and no disciplinary action was taken after he issued the order. As Hammond points out, documents on the website show that Rumsfeld was well aware of Bremer's intent to disband the Iraqi army; he had ample opportunity to refuse permission for such a move (one that largely led to the Iraqi insurgency we still see today). Bremer has claimed for years that he was not acting alone in this decision, and the documents on Rumsfeld's website appear to corroborate the accusation that at least Rumsfeld was complicit in this decision -- a decision that ran counter to the policy recommendations of his own Defense Department advisors and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Keep an eye out to see what else the document detectives come up with!