Wed 30 June 2021:
Donald Rumsfeld – Republican power broker, controversial defense secretary and architect of the Iraq War – died Tuesday, days before his 89th birthday, his family said Wednesday.
“It is with deep sadness that we share the news of the passing of Donald Rumsfeld, an American statesman and devoted husband, father, grandfather and great grandfather. At 88, he was surrounded by family in his beloved Taos, New Mexico,” the family said in a statement released Wednesday.
Serving under President George W Bush, he was a leading proponent of the administration’s “war on terror”.
On the heels of the September 11 attacks, Rumsfeld directed a U.S. military attack on Afghanistan that led to the toppling of the Taliban. Two years later, Rumsfeld oversaw the U.S. invasion of Iraq, a move aimed at removing then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
Rumsfeld resigned in 2006 amid the turmoil in post-war Iraq, but has defended his record.
There were a series of high-profile controversies during his tenure, including the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison.
Bush fired Rumsfeld in 2006 as the United States was mired in grinding insurgencies that killed and maimed thousands of U.S. troops and thousands more combatants and civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan. A
About 2,000 troops remain in Iraq supporting a fragile government fighting Islamic insurgents, and the last U.S. combat troops prepare to leave Afghanistan, where the top commander warns of a brewing civil war.
Photo: Jim Young / Reuters file
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