Insight with Andrew Cockburn: Rumsfeld – the Man Behind the US Military Disaster

Andrew Cockburn, writer and lecturer on defence and national affairs, tells how Donald Rumsfeld’s ruthless approach led the US into disastrous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and why he was eventually removed from the position of Secretary of Defence.

Cockburn argues that Rumsfeld, who oversaw the deployment of US forces between 2001 and the end of 2006, is largely to blame for the miserable state of the US mission in Iraq.

In his book, Rumsfeld: an American Disaster, Cockburn argues that Rumsfeld’s propensity to intimidation, indecision, ill-thought-out micromanagement and bureaucratic manipulation were the underpinning of the failure of US military intervention.

Andrew Cockburn is a writer and lecturer on defence and national affairs and is also author of five books, including (with Patrick Cockburn) Saddam Hussein: An American Obsession.

He has written for the New York Times, Vanity Fair and National Geographic.
He currently lives in Washington D.C.

Charles Glass is a freelance writer and broadcaster. He is the author of Tribes with Flags and Money for Old Rope, The Tribes Triumphant and The Northern Front.