Author: Rumsfeld Shed Clinton Policies; Chose Instead to Track Down, Eliminate Terrorists
by Chad Groening and Jody Brown
March 11, 2004
(AgapePress) - A veteran national security reporter hopes his new book will convince readers that history will judge Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld as one of America's most important defense leaders.The book is called Rumsfeld's War: The Untold Story of America's Anti-Terrorist Commander. It was written by Washington Times national security correspondent Rowan Scarborough. The author says Secretary Rumsfeld has proven to be the right man at the right time.
Rumsfeld, he says, has shown decisiveness and a willingness to declare a war on terror -- directly contrary to the methods employed by the Clinton Administration to handle the rising al-Qaida threat in the 1990s.
"The only way to beat [al-Qaida] is to destroy them -- that's the only way to beat them," Scarborough says. "And Rumsfeld understands that you have to kill them before they kill us -- and that's what he's out there trying to do every day. So that's why I would say the Rumsfeld approach is superior to what preceded him."
Scarborough, a former Navy hospital corpsman, explains that he obtained a copy of a secret document that committed the U.S. military to hunting down terrorists. That document, he says, appears in the back of his book.
"A key passage [of that document] says: 'The objective is to capture terrorists for interrogation or, if necessary, to kill them; not simply to arrest them in a law enforcement exercise.' It was the new Rumsfeld doctrine that we are going to use special operations anywhere in the world we think we find al-Qaida and can get at them."
The author and journalist says through that doctrine, Rumsfeld has shown the militant Islamic world that George W. Bush's United States is not Bill Clinton's. "It set aside the old doctrine of [using] law enforcement, not the military, to hunt down al-Qaida," he says.
One book reviewer says Scarborough offers "an enlightening comparison between Rumsfeld's decisiveness and willingness to act and declare a war on terror and the Clinton Administration's lassitude, distraction, and treatment of terrorism."
Scarborough, a 15-year veteran of covering the Pentagon for the Washington Times, says he is convinced that if voters decide to replace George W. Bush with John Kerry this fall, America will see a return to the policies of the 1990s.
