of mass destruction, but didn’t want to tell anybody.” It’s Looney Tunes.
Osama’s on a donkey, and we’re chasing him with F-16s. ,I DV 5XPVIHOG VD\V ´ZHDNQHVV LV SUR Rumsfeld, of course, was sitting in the vocative,” and the way you’re showing 2YDO2IÀFHQHDUO\WKLUW\\HDUVEHIRUH strength is by through a colossal display as the helicopters left the U.S. Em- of weakness and confusion…It seems to bassy roof in Saigon, a complete hu- achieve the exact opposite…. miliation for the United States. When If you really strongly feel that [the ra you ask him about what lessons he tionale for the wars] was absurd, as I do, GUDZVIURPWKHÀDVFRLQ9LHWQDPKH what was the ideology that brought this says, “Well, some things go well, and DERXW"3HRSOHDUHÁXPPR[HGE\LW7KH\ some things go badly. And clearly that reach for various kinds of explanations, went badly.” That’s the evaluation he like Big Oil, or world hegemony, or in gives. When you ask him if we would WHUQDWLRQDOÀQDQFH%XW,·PQRWVXUH,ÀQG KDYH EHHQ EHWWHU RII QRW ÀJKWLQJ WKH any of them satisfying, or satisfactory. Iraq War at all, he says, “Only time Maybe because in my heart of hearts I be will tell.” Is he giving you platitudes, lieve that history is insane. And why is it simply because that’s what he does to insane? Because it is the history of people mask what he thinks, or is showing who are insane. How we got tangled up in you an essential shallowness that re- WKLVPHVVLVPLQGERJJOLQJ ÁHFWVZKRKHUHDOO\LV" If I could clear up that ambiguity, there would have been no reason to make the movie. But I am left with that ambigu LW\ DW WKH HQG &RYHUXSV SODWLWXGHV homilies, epithets, rules that are hollow, ultimately, in their essence, but aren’t covering up anything. That’s all there is. Versus, maybe, a person who became practiced in a certain kind of statecraft, and then became lost in it. I don’t really have the answer to it. I really don’t. When you talk to him about the torture memos, he tells you that he hasn’t read them. And you express surprise, and he says, “I’m not a lawyer. What would I make of them?” I would say surprise and VKRFN ´+RZ can you not have read these memos?” For many of us, these memos are at the center of the Bush administration. They represent the essence of the Bush admin istration. The endorsement of torture, the abrogation of the Geneva Conventions, rather—all of these things are really, re ally disturbing.
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'DQQHU DERXW 5XPVIHOG·V SKLORVRSKLHV Are you supposed to just imagine any thing? And act on it? I think about the DQGSV\FKRORJ\ SKUDVH ´IDLOXUH RI LPDJLQDWLRQµ DORQJ -!2+ $!..%2 Rumsfeld appears ZLWK´WKHDEVHQFHRIHYLGHQFHLVQ·WHYL to be a man at once fascinated by and dence of absence.” threatened by the imagination. He talks ,VD\WR\RXWKDWWKHUHDUHÁ\LQJPRQ about the attack on Pearl Harbor, for keys with thermonuclear weapons head example, as an act of the imagination. ing towards Berkeley. And you say to %22/, -/22)3 A IDLOXUH of the PH ´:HOO ZKDW HYLGHQFH GR \RX KDYH imagination. RIWKHVHÁ\LQJPRQNH\VZLWKWKHUPRQX FOHDU ZHDSRQV"µ $QG , VD\ ´:HOO DE Exactly. Well, the DWWDFN was a tri- sence of evidence isn’t evidence of ab umph of the imagination. The failure sence.” Are we supposed to conjure with to anticipate it was a failure of the anything? It goes back to all of these be imagination. He’s haunted by that – liefs—the numerical superiority of the and the implication clearly is that the Russians, Saddam Hussein and W.M.D. failure to anticipate 9/11 was a similar It is a universe of imagined possibilities, failure of the imagination. unconstrained by evidence.
Also a universe of paradox. Talking about the run up to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, Rumsfeld asks, “What else might the U.S. have done to reach out to the Iraqi leaders and gotten them to behave rationally?” Since the Bush administration, and Rumsfeld in particular, were convinced that Saddam KDG weapons of mass destruction, what could the Iraqis have done that would have constituted “behaving rationally”? They couldn’t have relinquished their weapons of mass destruction because they didn’t have any to relinquish. , ÀQG RQH RI WKH VWUDQJHVW PRPHQWV LQ WKHÀOPWREHZKHQ5XPVIHOGVD\VWRPH ´:HOOPD\EHKHJRWULGRIKLVZHDSRQV
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He also has this aw-shucks, Midwestern affect, which almost becomes a parody. “Good Golly!” “Gracious me!” “Henny Penny, the sky is falling!” ´)RXUKDQGVRQWKHVWHHULQJZKHHOµ How knowing do you think Rumsfeld is when he’s uttering these contradictions? There are several revealing moments where there’s no sound. He has said what he has said and he’s simply grinning at you, into the camera. You let the camera stay on him in this extremely satisfying way, and it is at those moments that one dares to think that your camera has captured something UHDO about him, about his knowingness. I hesitate to say it openly. I can say it open ly to you. My wife, who is of course much smarter than I am, described McNamara as
he talks about how to win an argument any way you possibly can, and he pro FHHGV WR JLYH \RX RU ZD\V 2QH of them is, after the person has shown you to be completely wrong, you look WKHPULJKWLQWKHH\HDQG\RXVD\´,·P really pleased you’ve come around to my way of thinking.” And you don’t blink. You FDQ·W blink. You have to look them right in the eye. It’s exactly what he does. It’s so totally disarming. Not disarming—it’s destabilizing. It’s OLNH´:KHUHDP,":KRDP,":KDWLV going on here?” It’s an excursion into $OLFH LQ :RQGHUODQG. It’s 7KURXJK WKH /RRNLQJ*ODVV. … When you ask him, why is he doing this, why is he talking to you, he says, “That is a vicious question.” Then he says, “I’ll be damned if I know.” ´,·OO EH GDUQHGµ +H ZRXOGQ·W VD\ ´GDPQHGµ “Darned!” And so 7KH 8QNQRZQ .QRZQ ends with him professing QRW to know, indeed, what he’s doing—why he’s talking to you. It extends to everything! I think it really GRHV ´)LUVW RI DOO \RX KDYH QR ULJKW WR DVNPHWKDWTXHVWLRQ2QO\DNLQGRIORZ down varmint would ask a question like that. And anyway, I don’t know. So leave me alone.”
You think that’s true? You think he didn’t know why he was talking to you? You know, I don’t think he knows.... I’m a great believer in history from the inside out, rather than the outside in. 6RPHRQHDVNHGPH´'LG\RXHYHUWKLQN of interviewing other people for the mov %22/, -/22)3 7)4( 4%,,52)$% &%34)6!, #/ &/5.$%2 4/- ,5$$9 LH"µ$QG,VDLG´