Wednesday June 30th 2021
Face of the Iraq war
Ex-US Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld has died
When the US went to war against Iraq in 2002, Defense Minister Rumsfeld was President Bush’s face of the US government – and thus aroused a lot of criticism. Now the Republican has died of old age.
Former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is dead. The Republican politician died with his family in Taos, New Mexico, the family said. Rumsfeld was 88 years old. The Republican was head of the Pentagon from 2001 to 2006 under then-President George W. Bush and chief planner of the military operation in Iraq. Under ex-President Gerald Ford, Rumsfeld was the youngest defense secretary in US history from 1975 to 1977 – the oldest in the Bush cabinet at the time.
He was one of the most exposed representatives of the US government at the time, which the German government of the time under Chancellor Gerhard Schröder refused to take part in the campaign. At that time, Rumsfeld coined terms such as “the old and the new Europe” by referring to critical US allies in the west and more open-minded in the east of the continent.
Rumsfeld had many critics. In 2007, former US Senator John McCain said of his party colleague that he would “go down in history as one of the worst defense ministers ever”. In connection with the war, Rumsfeld had resigned after a severe defeat by the Republicans in congressional elections.
In 2008, the US Senate accused Rumsfeld of joint responsibility for human rights violations in US detention camps. In particular, the scandal surrounding the prison in Abu Ghreib near Baghdad brought Rumsfeld into distress. Rumsfeld was also accused of having contributed to subsequent ill-treatment in 2002 by authorizing “aggressive interrogation techniques” for suspected terrorists in the US prison camp in Guantánamo in Cuba. After his political career, Rumsfeld switched to the private sector.
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