Oscar winning filmmaker and documentarian extraordinaire Errol Morris’s latest ‘subject’ makes for compelling viewing even though he is best summed up by two very simple words ‘smug’ and ‘arrogant’. Donald Henry Rumsfeld seems to have more lives than a cat since he first burst into the public arena in 1962 when he was elected to Congress at the tender age of 30. The President at the time….. Nixon… quickly appointed him to some high-flying jobs, one even at Cabinet level before he was whisked off to Belgium to be the US Ambassador to NATO.The timing, as often the case in Rumsfeld’s ascent, couldn’t have been better. Far away in Europe he escaped the aftermath of the whole Watergate scandal that brought down Nixon and so many of his close Aides. The President was undone by his insistance on taping every single conversation he had in the White House, and interesting enough, Morris unearthed one in particular where Nixon was telling Haldeman that Rumsfeld should go as he ‘wasn’t one of them’.
Ford’s defeat meant that Rumsfeld was back in business with a couple of lucrative positions until he got the call to come back to Washington in 2001 by the U.S. Vice President, who was none other than his old deputy Dick Cheney. This time Rumsfeld became the oldest Secretary of Defense, and now a neoconservative was responsible for not only shaping the Government’s response to 9/11 but for his agressive stance of starting and maintaining the wars in Afganistan and Iraq.
Rumsfeld is a highly intelligent man and extremely articulate (when he wants to be) and has the infuriating habit of making these convoluted statements that leave you thinking WTF! When he discusses the line for justifying the absence of evidence regarding Iraq’s non-existing nuclear arsenal (on which war was justified) he adds the evidence of absence should also be considered. I.E. no-one proved he was actually wrong!
As well as several oblique references to the number of times that Rumsfeld was described as Machiavellian in the way that he maneuvered his ascending career at by rough-riding over others, there was his constant habit of passing the buck. He made no qualms in claiming that the warmonger was Secretary of State Colin Powell, and that he simply backed him up. But then again, in his obsession at being the closest ally to the President he made no bones about the fact that he would publicly humiliate Condoleezza Rice if he didn’t get his own way.
Morris was the perfect interviewer for Rumsfeld as his line of questioning was thorough and very well researched but never confrontational like other doc. makers such as Michael Moore. Rumsfeld rarely missed the beat with his well rehearsed and considered responses which were in sharp contrast to the Press Conferences that he held at the Defense Department. They showed him patronizing and dismissive and downright arrogant as he stumbled over legitimate questions he did not, and would not answer. In hindsight it amazes me that he got away with these appalling performances for so long. He was always (as Margaret Thatcher once penned) ‘economical with truth’ , and still is according to some of his responses to Morris.
When Bush eventually fired him in 2006 it was hard to tell if he was any worse than the people who remained in that Administration, but sad that he, and the others in Bush’s team have never really been held accountable for some of their very questionable actions especially the ones that resulted in so many deaths of Americans and others.
The final words of the film belong to Rumsfeld, when a rather incredulous Morris asks him why he agreed to sit down with him in the first place. Rumsfeld replies ‘that is a viscous question’ and with his customary smirk over his face added. ‘I’d be damned if I know’
P.S. Lest I forget : great soundtrack by Danny Elfman
★★★★★★★★★
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