4/1/2005

“Overall, [Secretary of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld presented a picture of a defense chief who didn’t bother to read half the memos that crossed his desk and generally handed off responsibility to others: [From Rumsfeld’s interview with the Department of Defense’s Deputy Inspector General for Investigations, on April 1, 2005] ‘Day in and out I rely on the senior officials of the department to fulfill their statutory responsibilities.’ He spent most of his time ‘functioning as the link between the President [Bush], Commander in Chief, and the combatant commanders conducting the wars.’ As for defense contractors, he didn’t meet with them ‘unless I ran into them at a party some place.’ “

 – Andrew Cockburn, Rumsfeld, Page 210