Rumsfeld slams Bush Sr. over harsh criticisms
Former US Vice-President Dick Cheney and ex-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld have reacted to previous President George H. W. Bush’s fiery criticisms in his biography which is due out next week.
In his upcoming book whose excerpts have been released to media, Bush senior calls Cheney an "iron ass" and Rumsfeld an "arrogant fellow" over their influence on his son George W. Bush’s presidency.
Bush senior, who was president from 1989-1993, has mostly been silent on his son's presidency and the US-led wars in Afghanistan (beginning in 2001) and in Iraq (starting in 2003). But in the new biography, he censures the two former officials who played a pivotal role in his son's presidency from 2001-2009.
Bush said Cheney exerted too much of a "hardline" influence on his son and that Rumsfeld was blind to the opinions of others, and "served the president badly."
He said the former VP "just became very hard-line and very different from the Dick Cheney I knew and worked with."
The comments drew reactions from Cheney and Rumsfeld, with Cheney telling Fox News that he would take the former president’s remarks as a mark of pride.
"I think a lot of people believed then, and still believe to this day, that I was aggressive in defending, in carrying out what I thought were the right policies," Cheney said.
Rumsfeld, however, took a harsher tone, ridiculing Bush senior over senility, saying he “is getting up in years.”
The elder Bush had some criticism for his son as well, disapproving of his firebrand attitude and incendiary rhetoric which were of no avail, except ‘getting headlines.’
Bush referred to his son's 2002 speech in which the former US president had pointed to an "axis of evil" – in reference to Iraq, Iran and North Korea.
He criticized his son’s rhetoric, saying, "You go back to the 'axis of evil' and these things, and I think that might be historically proved to be not benefiting anything."
According to CNN, George W. Bush responded to his father’s criticisms specifically on the idea that Cheney had an enormous amount of influence in his administration, noting, "I made the decisions. This was my philosophy."
"It is true that my rhetoric could get pretty strong and that may have bothered some people - obviously it did, including dad, though he never mentioned it."
Bush also defended Rumsfeld as an “effective” secretary of defense.
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