Unsurprisingly, Bradley Graham's review of Donald Rumsfeld's auto-biography found that the whole book was unapologetic and engaged in copious blame shifting. However, there was one bit that surprised me and another I found insightful:
Later, after Rice succeeded Powell as secretary of state, Rumsfeld argues that she pushed Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf too hard toward more democratic practices, wrongly put human rights ahead of important U.S. security interests in Uzbekistan, and fruitlessly pursued diplomatic engagement with Syria, Iran and North Korea.
This was consistent with some of her public statements, but while I'm not a fan it does speak well of her that she fought these battles.
Rumsfeld argues that the administration was wrong to have been so focused on preserving presidential powers that it initially eschewed negotiations with Congress in formulating detainee policy. A chief proponent of this strategy, Rumsfeld notes, was former vice president Dick Cheney, a longtime friend. Rumsfeld contends it would have been better to get buy-in from Congress by soliciting its involvement early in drafting detainee legislation.
Even so, Rumsfeld doubts that the resulting practices would have differed much. He remains unrepentant about the Pentagon's overall handling of detainee interrogations, his own approval of interrogation techniques that were harsher than those in the Army Field Manual, the management of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and the creation of military commissions. And he notes that even the Obama administration has found little recourse but to maintain the Guantanamo prison and continue holding suspected terrorists without according them prisoner-of-war status.
I think this is probably somewhat true; look at the increased holding times in the U.K. for example. Things may have gone differently on torture but on the other hand there would probably have been more new executive powers getting Congress's stamp. To some degree, that's a success of checks and balances. However, the lack of a law didn't stop the administration, which undercuts Congressional power versus the White House in the future.
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