Rumsfeld's Heavy Nuclear Trigger-Finger

Michael Roston
Raw Story
Monday, February 26, 2007

An excerpt from a new book by writer Alexander Cockburn depicts Donald Rumsfeld as eager to deploy massive nuclear retaliation in war games he played in the 1980s. The excerpt is featured at the website Salon.

Cockburn's book is called Rumsfeld: His Rise, Fall, and Catastrophic Legacy.

The incident described in the excerpt at Salon is drawn from the former Defense Secretary's heavy participation in 1980s "Continuity of Government" exercises, simulations of how government would attempt to function in the event of a major nuclear attack on the United States.

The exercises received heavy funding during the Reagan and Bush years, and according to Cockburn, "Rumsfeld loved these games" and never missed any of them.

But instead of working to re-establish a functioning US government in the aftermath of a massive disaster, Rumsfeld had other priorities.

A former official in the Defense Department at the time told Cockburn that Rumsfeld:

"always tried to unleash the maximum amount of nuclear firepower possible," in retaliation for a Soviet attack.

In the 1989 exercise Cockburn describes, Rumsfeld was successfully shut down by another player in the game who simulated the role of the Secretary of State.

Cockburn thinks the continuity of government exercise had interesting implications for Rumsfeld's real career as a policy and decision-maker.

"It is worth comparing Rumsfeld's behavior in the COG games with his performance in a real war," he observes.

"The casual, maybe even irresponsible decisions taken in that war reflect attitudes and reactions better suited to an elaborate game, from which real-life costs and consequences are excluded."

Cockburn also notes that when Rumsfeld wrote to George H.W. Bush and asked for an ambassadorship in Japan, the elder Bush scrawled the following message at the top of the letter, which was collected by a White House employee:

"NO! THIS WILL NEVER HAPPEN!! GB."

Rumsfeld was subsequently offered no position in the Bush 41 administration.

Cockburn's full excerpt can be read at Salon after viewing an advertisement.