Rumsfeld got to stay on for a while to play act in his theater of War in Iraq … Islamic State and Syrian Civil War as a legacy of US foreign policy in the Middle East.
The Republicans under Bush and Trump cozy up to the Saudi leadership … Clinton and Obama had their favorites in Erdogan of Turkey, the Emir of Qatar and Egypt’s new president Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood triad. Both Arab forces clash in an eternal battle of power in Islam. The Alawites of Syria and the Shia of Iraq and Iran have lost hundreds of thousands of lives, but are yet to gain in prominence in the region. Obama’s legacy of the Iran nuclear deal will soon be history and in the future all will be talking of Trump cutting NK’s Kim Jong-un down to size. A nuclear free zone in the Korean peninsula, the heart of trade for the US in the Asian Pacific.
George Bush got memos from Rumsfeld that used Scripture to push Iraq war
Some Pentagon analysts worried that if the memo covers leaked, they would inflame the Islamic world, undercut Washington’s Arab allies and bolster those who claimed America was out to Christianize the Muslim world.
One official was so disturbed he kept the report covers and recently gave them to GQ writer Robert Draper, a leading chronicler of the Bush administration.
“Commit to the LORD, whatever you do, and your plans will succeed – Proverbs 16:3,” appeared on a April 1, 2003 report over a photo of a U.S. soldier near a highway sign pointing to Baghdad. The next day, U.S. forces reached the Iraqi capital.
“Open the gates that the righteous nation may enter, the nation that keeps the faith – Isaiah 26:2,” appeared on a April 3, 2003 memo over a photo of a U.S. tank entering Baghdad.
Four months later, during a summit in Egypt, the Palestinian foreign minister said Bush told him he was on “a mission from God” and was getting commands directly from the Lord. The White House at the time dismissed the claim as “absurd.”
The damning GQ article, based on interviews with Bush insiders clearly eager to trash Rumsfeld, paints the former Pentagon chief as a control-freak who sacrificed policy to his power games.
○ Donald Rumsfeld’s holy war: How President Bush’s Iraq briefings came with quotes from the Bible