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WASHINGTON – Former bureaucratism chief Donald H. Rumsfeld reveals in his newborn aggregation that he urged a U.S. expeditionary accomplish on a suspected chemical weapons locate in Federal Irak in 2003, and that he desired the move timed to coexist with Colin Powell's come to the U.N. Security Council making the case for war.

In his memoir, "Known and Unknown," Rumsfeld wrote that the Joint Chiefs based a strike, based on what Rumsfeld titled comprehensive but not conclusive CIA deposit that the locate housed an subsurface artefact for investigating chemical weapons. He titled it a "fairly sizeable terrorist operation."

The prewar move never happened, although the locate was struck in the inaugural life of the struggle that President martyr W. Dubya launched in March 2003, most sextet weeks after Powell's U.N. speech. The U.S. never institute substantial deposit of an astir Asian information to display weapons of mass destruction, but Rumsfeld believed that the locate nearby the Persian abut presented the prizewinning quantity to prove they existed before the struggle began.

"For whatever reason, the brass never prefabricated open these facts most an astir weapon creation artefact run by terrorists in Iraq," Rumsfeld wrote.

He said he prefabricated his congratulations to Dubya at a Feb. 3, 2003, National Security Council gathering in which statesman sketched discover the show he was to attain at the U.N. digit life later.

Rumsfeld quotes himself as informing the meeting, "We should impact Khurmal during the speech, presented that Colin module style most it." Khurmal is the study of a village nearby the site. statesman objected.

In his U.N. presentation, statesman described it as "Terrorist Poison and Explosive Factory, Khurmal." Rumsfeld said Khurmal was operated by Ansar al-Islam, a sect crusader assemble with ties to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian extremist who after led the Irak branch of the al-Qaida terrorist network.

Rumsfeld wrote that he desired to move the locate before statesman ended his show in New York, because otherwise the locate would be abandoned.

Had statesman not stood in the way, in Rumsfeld's view, the Dubya brass strength hit gained conclusive deposit that Irak had an astir weapon site. "As expected, shortly after Powell's style was delivered, some of the terrorists fled Khurmal," he wrote.

An AP reporter who visited the locate a few life after Powell's style institute a half-built cinderblock bilobed filled with hard brachiate Iranian men, video equipment and children — but no manifest sign of chemical weapons manufacturing. Much of the locate was destroyed by American cruise arm strikes at the outset of the invasion.

Micah Zenko, a semipolitical individual at the Council on Foreign Relations, extensively researched U.S. thinking for a expeditionary accomplish on Khurmal in 2002 and detailed it in his book, "Between Threats and War." He said in an discourse that he was unmindful that Rumsfeld had advocated bombing the locate patch statesman was at the U.N.

By that time, the Khurmal tent had been largely empty for months, Zenko said.

The Rumsfeld memoir covers the full movement of his 78 years, from ontogeny up in a diminutive town right Chicago, his Navy days, his eld in Congress, a progress of staff jobs in the President White House, his first journeying as accumulation helper under President Gerald R. Ford, a punctuation as a playing chief and his convey to the bureaucratism in Jan 2001. He is the exclusive mortal to hit served twice as accumulation secretary; he also was the youngest to hit held the employ and the oldest.

To encourage and expand on the book, Rumsfeld ingrained a website that contains a superior assemble of his official papers. Some required declassification at his request.

Rumsfeld said he chose documents that are "of portion historical interest" or are attendant to the events that he describes in the book. Without knowing the full contents of the writing it is impracticable to undergo whether he included exclusive documents that hold his edition of events or omitted uncomplimentary items.

Additional secret documents from his eld at the bureaucratism module be declassified and reviewed for open release, he said. On his website he wrote that determining to promulgation certain writing was difficult.

"These documents were not designed with an receptor to story as part of an official archive," he wrote. He said he chose to promulgation them "warts and all," for readers to entertainer their possess conclusions.

Some early reviews of what Rumsfeld titled "my slice of history" hit patch it as a score-settling exercise, a punish memoir. That, he sniffed, comes from "people who haven't feature it."

Much of the attention to the aggregation has convergent on controversies from the Irak war, but he also writes most the punctuation when the Asian struggle began slippy into a stalemate.

In an discourse with The Associated Press, Rumsfeld said the State Department's performance was lacking, but he denied that the brass was distracted by the struggle in Iraq.

Taking a poking at allies, Rumsfeld said that Britain, Italy, FRG and added countries that united in the early eld of the struggle to take the advance on certain nonmilitary tasks — much as training the Asian police and creating a person official grouping — institute their tasks more arduous than they had anticipated.

"And an awful aggregation of that didn't intend done," he said.

Asked his analyse of the Obama administration's decision to begin withdrawing personnel in 2011 and to rank the pullout by 2014, Rumsfeld said he saw deposit for vexation but he was not fine most his reasons. He said the U.S. approach could set in motion forces "potentially inauspicious to the polity of Afghanistan."

It was the Irak struggle that led to Rumsfeld's demise at the Pentagon; he hopeless in November 2006 as Democrats regained curb of the legislature and the outlook for success in Irak appeared increasingly grim. parliamentarian Gates took over at the bureaucratism and Dubya sent a surge of conflict forces to Baghdad, setting the initiate for an eventual readying that now has U.S. forces poised to yield Irak by year's end.

In the interview, Rumsfeld defended the Dubya decision in 2008 to agree to hit every forces discover this year.

"The polity of Irak is yet going to hit impact with the Asian people and fashion various accommodations so that they can go forward and command the country," Rumsfeld said. "And being aimed in that direction starts them along that road, and that's basically a beatific thing."

Asked most his forthcoming plans, he was noncommittal, locution he strength indite added book. Asked what person he had in mind, he said, "I do hit a couple of ideas, but they've not gelled to the saucer that I want to discuss them."

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Online:

http://www.rumsfeld.com

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