What Donald Rumsfeld Left Behind
Consider This from NPR
NPR
4.2 • 6.2K Ratings
🗓️ 1 July 2021
⏱️ 12 minutes
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Summary
NPR's Steve Inskeep reports on one group of people still living with the consequences: thousands of Afghans who worked with the U.S. military over the past 20 years. More from that story, which aired on Morning Edition, is here.
Additional reporting in this episode from NPR's Greg Myre.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | In a live interview broadcast on NPR in November of 2002, Secretary of Defense Donald |
| 0:06.8 | Rumsfeld was completely clear. |
| 0:09.4 | Any conflict in Iraq would be over quickly. |
| 0:12.9 | The Gulf War in the 1990 lasted five days on the ground. |
| 0:19.0 | I can't tell you if the use of force in Iraq today would last five days or five weeks |
| 0:26.1 | or five months, but it certainly isn't going to last any longer than that. |
| 0:32.0 | Rumsfeld said the US military had vastly more powerful weapons than it did in the Gulf |
| 0:36.8 | War. |
| 0:37.8 | He assured listeners that the US, which had been operating in Afghanistan for more than |
| 0:41.8 | a year, would be able to justify the use of military force in Iraq as well. |
| 0:46.7 | The case is being made and it's being made persuasively and in the event force is used. |
| 0:53.0 | There's no doubt in my mind, but that the evidence as to why it had to be used will be very |
| 0:59.4 | real. |
| 1:02.7 | Four years after that interview, with no weapons of mass destruction found, Donald Rumsfeld |
| 1:08.2 | resigned. |
| 1:09.2 | And now, with his death this week at the age of 88, the conflict that came to be known |
| 1:14.2 | as the Forever War has officially outlived him. |
| 1:17.8 | I'm now the fourth United States president to preside over American troop presence in |
| 1:23.3 | Afghanistan, two Republicans, two Democrats. |
| 1:27.5 | I will not pass this responsibility onto a fifth. |
| 1:31.7 | That was President Biden back in April when he outlined a plan to bring US troops home |
| 1:36.2 | from Afghanistan before September 11th of this year. |
... |
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