Here’s what he said:

We are up against a vicious enemy, the radical Islamists are there, they intend to try to create a caliphate in this world and fundamentally alter the nature of nation states, and we’re reluctant to engage in the competition of ideas and point out what they really are and how vicious they are. This current administration is even afraid to say the word Islamist. And we need to fight. We need to be willing to say what it is and be willing to tackle it. And thank goodness for people like you who are willing to do it.

Thank goodness for people like Rush!

I understand why Limbaugh and Beck peddle the caliphate notion; they make money on fear. But Rumsfeld joining the charge is remarkable. That a former defense secretary would express such ignorance about Islam — generalizing about a global religion that’s divided Sunni from Shia, radical from reformer, al-Qaida vs. the vast majority, and in so many more ways — is stunning. At a moment when more conservatives are denouncing Beck’s crusade, Rumsfeld casts his lot with the fear-mongers.

I’m not sure why Rumsfeld needs the Obama administration to use the word “Islamist.” It makes sense to zero in on violent Islamic fundamentalism, not the whole religion. It’s also ridiculous to say we’re not engaging in the “competition of ideas”; in fact, freedom of religion and expression are two of our best assets in that competition, but wingnuts don’t like either. It’s clear that Rummy’s rehab tour is aimed to shore up his standing with conservatives, not the whole country. In the book and in interviews, he’s toughest on Powell, who’s hated by the far right, and soft on his boss, President Bush. The far right misses no opportunity to insinuate or say flat-out that Barack Hussein Obama is soft on our Muslim enemies. I didn’t think much was beneath Rumsfeld, but he reached a new low with Limbaugh today.

I talked about it on MSNBC’s “Hardball” today with Chris Matthews and David Corn:

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“Rambling” does not even do it justice, actually. Highlights:

• “[Nixon] said ‘politics is a game of inches’ and that we had 49 touchdowns and they, the Democrats/McGovern, had one touchdown and a field goal — the field goal being Washington D.C..”
• “The President then said, ‘Richard Nixon doesn’t shoot blanks.’”
• “Next week we should think through how to best serve, and that he will have the individual conversations with each. He said we are too busy doing things instead of thinking. He said that Richard Nixon does more thinking because of the discipline he imposes on himself. We ought to think through where the Administration ought to go. He said that with one exception he will have no appointments on Sunday afternoons because he has missed enough football games already.“

And right after promising massive layoffs (“for future reference he wanted them to know that it would be very tough to hold on to any Presidential appointee who was in office when the President was sworn in office on January 20, 1972″), because “government needs an enema,” Nixon went on this odd historical tangent:

The President said that, his favorite period in history was the British Parliamentary debates of the 1850′s – the Peelites, Winston Churchill’s father, a brilliant Tory, whose career was destroyed by, I believe he said, syphilis, who wrote a brilliant biography of his father. The President mentioned Gladstone and Disraeli debates. Gladstone was in office longer. Disraeli’s was a more brilliant record. He was Prime Minister twice, at the age of 60, and he ended at the age of 74, after he had come back at the age of 68. Gladstone, the great reformer, Disraeli described Gladstone as “an exhausted volcano”. He said this argues for a one term President (what his logic was escapes me). I understood his point, but from the standpoint of a historical record, it seemed to me to be tangential and not central, because Disraeli was a perfect example of the reason you shouldn’t have a one term President in the sense the President was talking.)

Immediately after Nixon left the room, Haldeman handed everyone this note asking everyone assembled for a letter of resignation.

The full memo is below. Click to enlarge.

Memo courtesy Rumsfeld.com.

Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says in a new book that he wanted to oversee the initial reconstruction of Iraq following the United States’ invasion of the country but he was rebuffed by President George W. Bush.

“Bush didn’t cotton to the idea,” Rumsfeld writes in his yet-to-be-released memoir Known and Unknown, excerpts of which were obtained by POLITICO.

“‘What if we had a problem with North Korea?’” Bush asked, according to a scene that Rumsfeld said took place just before the 2003 invasion.

“‘Well, Mr. President, if that happened,’ I replied, ‘I would come home immediately.’ The President thought about that for a moment. Then he shook his head. ‘No, Don, you need to be here.’ I should have pressed the point harder.”

Oh, he didn’t “cotton” to it. How folksy.

Rumsfeld is also going to release a website full of “primary documents” that he thinks will prove his point. It will be like the WikiLeaks, only instead of pulling back the curtain and exposing American diplomatic and military secrets, they will probably just be a bunch of memos about how much Rumsfeld was “concerned” about the security situation in post-invasion Baghdad. Also I bet there will be a document that says “I promise Donald Rumsfeld had no idea that we were torturing and killing prisoners, signed, everyone at Abu Ghraib.”

Speaking of! Rumsfeld says Bill Clinton called him once and said: “No one with an ounce of sense thinks you had any way in the world to know about the abuse taking place that night in Iraq.” Yes, well, the people with ounces of sense are completely wrong.

Rumsfeld also apparently devotes a lot of space to rewaging various long-forgotten bureaucratic disputes. There is something about George H. W. Bush, whom he clearly hates. Rumsfeld also wants everyone to know that former Vice President Nelson Rockefeller was “bullying” and an “imperial vice president,” which is hilarious for many reasons, including Rumsfeld’s closeness to Dick Cheney and the fact that as Gerald Ford’s chief of staff, Rumsfeld basically blocked Rockefeller from doing anything.

Now let’s enjoy the attempted rehabilitation of Rumsfeld in the press, where his awfulness has probably been entirely forgotten.

A White House spokesman has not responded to an e-mail Salon sent seeking comment on Rumsfeld’s statement and information about Obama’s assertion, but Press Secretary Robert Gibbs did address the issue at his daily press briefing. His response, which was light on specifics and heavy on snark, did suggest that Rumsfeld may technically be right.

“I will let Secretary Rumsfeld explain to you and to others whether he thinks that the effort in Afghanistan was sufficiently resourced during his tenure as secretary of defense,” Gibbs said in response to a question from ABC News’ Jake Tapper. Pressed further, he took a shot at Rumsfeld, saying, “I’ll let him explain to the American public whether he believes that the effort in Afghanistan during 2001 to 2006 was appropriately resourced. You know, you go to war with the secretary of defense you have, Jake.”

Still, it seems Rumsfeld and Obama might both be right, principally because the former defense secretary’s statement only covered the years 2001 to 2006, when he left the Bush administration. Gibbs said Obama was referring to requests made in 2008, and there is evidence those occurred.

There’s one other possibility here, ironically and inadvertently suggested by the Weekly Standard’s Michael Goldfarb. He cited an October piece from the Standard by Steve Hayes in which an anonymous defense official is quoted as saying, “There was no request on anyone’s desk for eight months. There was not a request that went to the White House because we didn’t have forces to commit. So on the facts, they’re wrong.”

Now, that refers to 2008. But it’s certainly not out of the realm of possibility  that other generals in Afghanistan found themselves in a similar position in the years after the invasion of Iraq, knowing they needed reinforcements but also that there were none, and so they simply never submitted formal requests.

But a new report commissioned by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee shows that, in fact, the U.S. military may have had bin Laden in its grasp, and decided that dropping the net was too risky a proposition. The study, released Monday, is titled “Tora Bora revisited: how we failed to get Bin Laden and why it matters today.” According to the report, then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld turned down requests for a larger American troop presence to block escape routes from Tora Bora.

Rumsfeld had emphasized a small American footprint in Afghanistan from the start of the war. He was famously besotted with the idea of warfare conducted by small, agile teams working with local allies and heavy air support. Accordingly, at Tora Bora, there were fewer than 100 American commandos on the scene. Although officials in Washington, including the president, had been told that the Afghan soldiers accompanying the Americans were tired, cold and not that invested in capturing bin Laden, requests for American reinforcements were denied.

The study contradicts the claim of former Vice President Dick Cheney, who said that it wasn’t conclusive at the time where the terrorist leader was. In fact, according to the report, bin Laden was clearly in reach at Tora Bora. Even he thought it was already over: Expecting to die, he wrote up a last will and testament.

Apparently, Rumsfeld was convinced that sending more troops would antagonize the local population, potentially causing an insurgent resistance. By November — one month before the battles at Tora Bora took place — American planners had also already begun shifting emphasis and attention to preparations for a war in Iraq.