Rumsfeld on Iraq's WMDs: OK, So We 'Misstated'

You know those weapons of mass destruction that triggered the US war on Iraq? Their existence, which turned out to be nonexistent, was only "suspected," Donald Rumsfeld has finally admitted in his new book, Known and Unknown. OK, so "I made a misstatement," he says. At the time he was asked on a news program about the suspected sites, and "I replied: 'We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad," he recalls.

Comments like that have been repeated "to try to depict the administration as purposefully misrepresenting the intelligence," he writes. But such misstatements "were not common and certainly not characteristic," he adds. One thing Rummy definitely regrets is his cavalier response—"stuff happens"—after the Baghdad museum was looted as US troops invaded, notes the Guardian. "I vented some annoyance by uttering a few ill-chosen words," he concedes.

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