Not since Robert McNamara has a secretary of defense been so hated by the military and derided by the public, yet played such a critical role in national security policy—with such disastrous results. Donald Rumsfeld was a natural for secretary of defense, a position he'd already occupied once before. He was smart. He worked hard. He was skeptical of the status quo in military affairs and dedicated to high-tech innovations. He seemed the right man at the right time-but history was to prove otherwise. Now Dale Herspring, a political conservative and lifelong Republican, offers a nonpartisan assessment of Rumsfeld's impact on the U.S. military establishment from 2001 to 2006, focusing especially on the Iraq War-from the decision to invade through the development and execution of operational strategy and the enormous failures associated with the postwar reconstruction of Iraq. Extending the critique of civil-military relations he began in The Pentagon and the Presidency, Herspring highlights the relationship between the secretary and senior military leadership, showing how Rumsfeld and a handful of advisers—notably Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith—manipulated intelligence and often ignored the military in order to implement their policies. And he demonstrates that the secretary's domineering leadership style and trademark arrogance undermined his vision for both military transformation and Iraq. Herspring shows that, contrary to his public deference to the generals, Rumsfeld dictated strategy and operations—sometimes even tactics—to prove his transformation theories. He signed off on abolishing the Iraqi army, famously refused to see the need for a counterinsurgency plan, and seemed more than willing to tolerate the torture of prisoners. Meanwhile, the military became demoralized and junior officers left in droves. Rumsfeld's Wars revisits and reignites the concept of "arrogance of power," once associated with our dogged failure to understand the true nature of a tragic war in Southeast Asia. It provides further evidence that success in military affairs is hard to achieve without mutual respect between civilian authorities and military leaders—and offers a definitive case study in how not to run the office of secretary of defense.

A highly critical but nonpartisan assessment of the controversial former Defense Secretary as told by one of the leading experts on civil-military relations. Focuses on Rumsfeld's notoriously domineering leadership style, flawed vision for transforming the military, and failures in the Iraq War.

The man once named one of America’s ten “toughest” CEOs by Fortune magazine offers current and future leaders practical advice on how to make their companies and organizations more effective. Throughout his distinguished career—as a naval aviator, a U.S. Congressman, a top aide to four American presidents, a high-level diplomat, a CEO of two Fortune 500 companies, and the only twice-serving Secretary of Defense in American history—Donald Rumsfeld has collected hundreds of pithy, compelling, and often humorous observations about leadership, business, and life. When President Gerald Ford ordered these aphorisms distributed to his White House staff in 1974, the collection became known as "Rumsfeld's Rules." First gathered as three-by-five cards in a shoebox and then typed up and circulated informally over the years, these eminently nonpartisan rules have amused and enlightened presidents, business executives, chiefs of staff, foreign officials, diplomats, and members of Congress. They earned praise from the Wall Street Journal as "Required reading," and from the New York Times which said: "Rumsfeld's Rules can be profitably read in any organization…The best reading, though, are his sprightly tips on inoculating oneself against that dread White House disease, the inflated ego." Distilled from a career of unusual breadth and accomplishment, and organized under practical topics like hiring people, running a meeting, and dealing with the press, Rumsfeld's Rules can benefit people at every stage in their careers and in every walk of life, from aspiring politicos and industrialists to recent college graduates, teachers, and business leaders.

A powerful memoir from the late former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld With the same directness that defined his career in public service, Rumsfeld's memoir is filled with previously undisclosed details and insights about the Bush administration, 9/11, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It also features Rumsfeld's unique and often surprising observations on eight decades of history. Rumsfeld addresses the challenges and controversies of his illustrious career, from the unseating of the entrenched House Republican leader in 1965, to helping the Ford administration steer the country away from Watergate and Vietnam, to the war in Iraq, to confronting abuse at Abu Ghraib. Along the way, he offers his plainspoken, first-hand views and often humorous and surprising anecdotes about some of the world's best-known figures, ranging from Elvis Presley to George W. Bush. Both a fascinating narrative and an unprecedented glimpse into history,Known and Unknown captures the legacy of one of the most influential men in public service.

US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld-the mesmerizing figure who oversaw the US Army, Navy, Airforce, and Marines-has been widely blamed for the catastrophic state of Iraq. In October 2006 Rumsfeld was sacked, his disastrous running of the war in Iraq being held responsible for the American public's loss of faith in the Bush administration. In this groundbreaking book, Washington insider Andrew Cockburn reveals that Rumsfeld's political legacy stretches back decades and speculates as to where his career might take him now. Drawing on sources that include Rumsfeld's inner circle as well as high-ranking officials in the Pentagon and White House, Rumsfeld, going far beyond previous accounts, reveals its subject in his true colours-as a man consumed with the urge to dominate each and every human encounter, and whose ambition has long been matched by his inability to display genuine leadership or accept responsibility. The book demolishes the notion that he has been a forceful and effective manager driven to transform the military, and intimately details Rumsfeld's all-important relationships to Bush and Cheney, and how it has affected the wars that the USA and the UK are fighting today in Iraq and Afghanistan. Cockburn also exposes and scrutinizes Rumsfeld's earlier career, revealing his long-standing record of processing faulty intelligence, blurring personal and professional interests, and manipulating bureaucratic systems. Brimming with powerful revelations, Rumsfeld is a must-have piece of investigative journalism.

"He won't be tried in the United States. He can't be tried by an international tribunal. So Donald Rumsfeld will have to be prosecuted by book."—from The Trial of Donald RumsfeldThe Trial of Donald Rumsfeld lays out the evidence that high-level officials of the Bush administration ordered, authorized, implemented, and permitted war crimes, in particular the crimes of torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.Using primary source documents ranging from Rumsfeld's "techniques chart" and Iraqi plaintiffs' statements to the testimony of whistleblowers and key pieces of reportage, the book sets forth evidence of a torture program that took place throughout the world: in Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantánamo, secret CIA prisons, and other places unknown.The accused are accorded a defense drawn from their memos and public statements. Readers are allowed to judge whether the Bush administration has engaged in torture and whom among the administration to hold responsible.Reminiscent of Christopher Hitchens's bestselling The Trial of Henry Kissinger, The Trial of Donald Rumsfeld constitutes one of the only attempts to hold high-ranking Bush administration officials criminally responsible for their actions.Includes excerpts from:• testimony from Abu Ghraib victims and the Tipton Three• the interrogation log from Mohammed al Qahtani's detainment at Guantánamo• the Gonzales, Yoo, and Bybee memos• the U.S. Army's Fay/Jones Report on the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib• the August 2004 Final Report of the Independent Panel to Review Department of Defense Detention Operations• testimony from the former head of Abu Ghraib, Janis Karpinski• and analyses by Peter Weiss, Wolfgang Kaleck, Vincent Warren, and others

When George W. Bush campaigned for the White House, he was such a novice in foreign policy that he couldn't name the president of Pakistan and momentarily suggested he thought the Taliban was a rock-and-roll band. But he relied upon a group called the Vulcans—an inner circle of advisers with a long, shared experience in government, dating back to the Nixon, Ford, Reagan and first Bush administrations. After returning to power in 2001, the Vulcans were widely expected to restore U.S. foreign policy to what it had been under George H. W. Bush and previous Republican administrations. Instead, the Vulcans put America on an entirely new and different course, adopting a far-reaching set of ideas that changed the world and America's role in it. Rise of the Vulcans is nothing less than a detailed, incisive thirty-five-year history of the top six members of the Vulcans—Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Armitage, and Condoleezza Rice—and the era of American dominance they represent. It is the story of the lives, ideas and careers of Bush's war cabinet—the group of Washington insiders who took charge of America's response to September 11 and led the nation into its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Separately, each of these stories sheds astonishing light not only on the formative influences that brought these nascent leaders from obscurity to the pinnacle of power, but also on the experiences, conflicts and competitions that prefigured their actions on the present world stage. Taken together, the individuals in this book represent a unique generation in American history—a generation that might be compared to the "wise men" who shaped American policy after World War II or the "best and brightest" who prosecuted the war in Vietnam. Over the past three decades, since the time of Vietnam, these individuals have gradually led the way in shaping a new vision of an unchallengeable America seeking to dominate the globe through its military power.