The man who would be king

Rumsfeld: His Rise, Fall and Catastrophic Legacy

by Andrew Cockburn

Reviewed by Pepe Escobar

It was four years ago today, Field Marshal von Rumsfeld got his guns to play.

A fitting way to "celebrate" the bombastic opening of the most astonishing blunder in recent military/geopolitical history would be to read Andrew Cockburn's book. The late US president Richard "Tricky Dick" Nixon, a ruthless judge of character himself, already in March 1971 ably described the future Bush administration Pentagon warlord as "a ruthless little bastard". Not only is this the title of one of Cockburn's chapters, it should be the book's epigraph.

Rumsfeld: His Rise, Fall and Catastrophic Legacy is a book of no-nonsense reportage to be read in one sitting. Much of what it presents is not new. The kicker is how it connects the dots. The picture emerges of a ruthless opportunist, fueled by a toxic ego and blind ambition, a master of very nasty rudeness who perfected the killer technique of "inflicting hours of rapid and often disconnected questions on the people under him". What for? To win the game - whatever the game might be. Rumsfeld was a shock to the system - the ultimate operative, the ultimate fixer.