Donald Rumsfeld is, apparently, building an online library with all his declassified documents. As it is bound to happen, I had to give it a cursory look. There are, needless to say, no ground breaking revelations, but I do find the memos fascinating in the sense that they provide a unique window to Rumsfeld’s use of language, rhetoric and a glimpse of his uncensored political ideology. Take, for instance, this memo he wrote to President Bush on November 29th, 2005 about the progress of the Iraq war (link goes to PDF). I made a screen capture because the font use is not coincidental. What he chooses to stress, highlight and accentuate tells us as much as the words he uses.
Notice the placement of US casualties in the list of priorities? It seems that, for him, Iran and Syria’s “unhelpful” attitude ranks higher in importance than US soldiers killed in a senseless war? Is that what we take from this memo?
Also, a transparent attempt to manipulate language use, by deciding that insurgents is no longer an appropriate term to refer to those who oppose the American occupation.
More memos and other documents available for scrutiny here.
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