Rush Limbaugh 45 minute interview with Donald Rumsfeld:

Rush interviewed former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, yesterday on his show.  A fascinating interview...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: We want to welcome to the program the former secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, whose new book is out today. It's a memoir called Known and Unknown. Mr. Secretary, welcome. Great to have you here on our program. RUMSFELD: Thank you so much, Rush, I'm delighted to be with you. RUSH: Is this your first book? RUMSFELD: It is my first book, and at 78 years old, it's a long gestation period. RUSH: Well, it is amazing, you have been in public life -- folks, here's how long he's been in public life. He met Dick Cheney when Cheney applied to be an intern in Secretary Rumsfeld's congressional office. What year was that? RUMSFELD: The early part of 1969. RUSH: Okay. RUMSFELD: Rush, I've lived one-third of the history of America. That's breathtaking to think of that. RUSH: That's what I want to get to. You have a perspective on this that no one else really has. Just from one standpoint: civility in American politics. You have been around since 1969, that's the Vietnam War, you were around through Watergate. You left for a while and joined G.D. Searle where you presided over the marketing of aspartame, Equal. You go back into government, you've been a patriot all of your life. I want to ask you, as forthrightly and honestly as you can tell, what is the difference, if there is any, in civility, mean-spiritedness, extremism, intraparty rivalries, the defamatory things said about people in politics. Has it always been the same to you or has it gotten progressively worse and at any time were you just shocked and saddened by it that you thought maybe it's not worth it anymore?   RUMSFELD: Well, actually, when I left the Navy -- I was a Navy pilot -- I went to Washington when Eisenhower was president, then I was in Congress during a tough period, during the Kennedy and Johnson era when the Vietnam War was going on and the civil rights legislation, and there were riots in America and protests and blood being thrown on the Pentagon and graves being dug. So that was a tough time. And as you said, we now come up into the twenty-first century, and you think of what people like Senator Kennedy said about the Abu Ghraib. He said that, "Saddam Hussein's torture chambers are now under new management, the United States government." And Senator Durbin said that Guantanamo Bay was like Nazis and the Soviet gulag and Pol Pot. You could even go back to Abraham Lincoln and some of the perfectly terrible things that were said about him. We've had these periods in our history where that's happened. But the short answer to your question is, no, Rush, there's never been a time when I've thought that it wasn't worthwhile. I believe it is worthwhile, and I think that it's important that Americans be willing to serve and be willing to live with the kind of lack of civility that occurs. And I'm proud to have served.

RUSH: Is this lack of civility -- and I'm focusing on this here at the outset because it's now used as a political wedge to try to silence people like you in government when you're there. Is it worse now? You cite the Civil War. I can't imagine the country ever being more roiled since the Civil War. Is it worse today? Are the people claiming that we need to get rid of public voices of a certain persuasion, do they have a point or is this all just manufactured, it's standard operating procedure for democracy? RUMSFELD: Well, let's hope it isn't standard operating procedure for a democracy. What we need is people willing to say what they believe, to become engaged and helping to guide and direct the course of this country. And you look at most recently the energy from the Tea Party people where they've gotten excited and concerned and stood up and spoke their minds, and that's such a healthy thing, and provides energy for our country. I think that's a good thing. Now, is it disappointing to see people behave in a way that's so uncivil? Yes, it is disappointing, but we can't let that turn us off because we as citizens have a responsibility. RUSH: Now, you talked to Diane Sawyer at World News Tonight recently, and you told her that you wanted to be allowed to resign after the pictures from Abu Ghraib were published. You thought those pictures were such a stain on the country, and then you had these six generals that stepped forward to call for your resignation. What was it about, given all the things you've seen, all the things that you have been in charge of over your years in government, what was it about Abu Ghraib that so disgusted you? RUMSFELD: Well, the behavior was disgusting. It was perverted. It was deviant. And here are these truly wonderful men and women in the United States military who volunteer to serve our country, and their reputations were stained by the behavior of a few handfuls of people. And the implication was that that had something to do with interrogation. And of course the truth was none of the people that were being abused were subjects of interrogation, and none of the people doing the abuse were interrogators. They were prison guards. It was discovered by the military, investigated by the military, and people were prosecuted and punished. But the damage to our country was significant. If you think about it, the enemy could go out and use those pictures to raise money against us, to recruit against us, and I've always believed in accountability. And since the lines of accountability were confused and some people who had been there were gone and the people who were there were new, I decided that the easiest way to demonstrate accountability and the importance of it would be for me to submit my resignation, so I did, twice. RUSH: But the president didn't want you to quit? RUMSFELD: That's correct. RUSH: Now, do you really think that those pictures from Abu Ghraib, do terrorists really need that to recruit? RUMSFELD: No, they're perfectly capable of lying, and they did. I mean take one of the rumors that was spread around the world about alleging that someone at Guantanamo Bay had flushed a Koran down the toilet. There were riots in three or four cities, people were killed, and by the time the truth came around that there never was a Koran flushed down the toilet at Guantanamo, it was absolutely false, and of course the journalist that did it then said if there was some portion of their story that was wrong, they're sorry, but the people were dead already. So these things are important. The thing that was on the backside of that however is that there's something about our country that we're reluctant to engage in a competition of ideas in government. We are up against a vicious enemy, the radical Islamists are there, they intend to try to create a caliphate in this world and fundamentally alter the nature of nation states, and we're reluctant to engage in the competition of ideas and point out what they really are and how vicious they are. This current administration is even afraid to say the word Islamist. And we need to fight. We need to be willing to say what it is and be willing to tackle it. And thank goodness for people like you who are willing to do it. RUSH: In context of all that, what do you make of what's happening in Egypt? So many people are confused. I must confess I'm having a tough time finding somebody I believe is able to convince me what this is really all about. RUMSFELD: Let me make a couple of comments in that regard. First, it seems to me that what's important is private diplomacy, not public diplomacy. Public diplomacy tends to be aimed not so much at the people you're trying to persuade, but to satisfy your own base and to make yourself look good. And one knows that the private diplomacy is what ultimately is going to be important. So it's not surprising that those of us on the outside don't have a perfect fix on what's taking place. Second, I would say that there are without question -- first of all, Egypt's an enormously important country. It's large, it's historically important. From an educational standpoint it's a big factor in the Arab world and what happens there makes a big difference to us. As you know well, we watched what happened in Iran where there was a popular revolution and the people that were the best organized and the most vicious took over the country. And they didn't end up with freer political systems or freer economic systems. They ended up with the ayatollahs controlling that country. RUSH: Well, that's the thing. Are we looking at something similar here or is this really -- I mean there are people telling us this is a democracy movement, we need to be fully, fully behind what's going on here. If that means the ouster of Mubarak, then we must be for it immediately. We're hearing that argument as well. RUMSFELD: Well, you can have a perfectly legitimate democracy movement where there are a variety of people across the political spectrum who all agree that there needs to be change. The problem is the people who tend to be the best organized are the most radical and the most vicious. And so you can have a broad popular democracy movement and have it end being taken over by the most vicious people and the result is you don't end up with free political systems or free economic systems, you end up with a handful of radicals controlling the country. That's the risk