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Donald Rumsfeld book admits 'misstatements' over WMD sites
Donald Rumsfeld book admits 'misstatements' over WMD sites
Former US defence secretary's memoirs express regret for saying 'stuff happens' over Iraq war
Donald Rumsfeld's autobiography Known and Unknown has provoked John McCain and shifted the blame to Paul Bremer. Photograph: Jacquelyn Martin/AP
The former US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, admits in his memoirs that he made a mistake in claiming that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction sites round Baghdad and Tikrit, one of the main justifications for launching the Iraq invasion.
Rumsfeld says now: "I made a misstatement." What he meant to say is there were 'suspect sites'.
The incident is one of many in the 815-page autobiography, Known and Unknown, in which he seeks to revise the history of the Bush administration on issues ranging from Iraq to the Guantánamo detention centre.
Rumsfeld is one of the most controversial figures of the Bush era and his autobiography has long been awaited. The Guardian obtained an advance copy.
He recounts how during the Iraq invasion in 2003 he was asked on a news programme about WMD. He says he normally tried to be reserved and precise on intelligence matters but in this instance he made a mistake. "Recalling the CIA's designation of various 'suspect' WMD sites in Iraq, I replied: 'We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad.' My words have been quoted many times by critics of the war as an example of how the Bush administration misled the public."
Critics of the war, he writes, accused the Bush administration of lying, compiling "a small string of comments – ill-chosen or otherwise deficient – to try to depict the administration as purposefully misrepresenting the intelligence."
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