On Donald Rumsfeld and the Iraq War

A Letter to the President of Hillsdale College
By Lee Enochs

Dear Dr. Arnn,

My name is Lee Enochs and I am a graduate student in politics at Claremont Graduate University. I am a big supporter of Hillsdale College and greatly respect your opinion on national affairs.

Recently, however, I read your post about Donald Rumsfeld and his legacy and I experienced an internal struggle over whether or not I should respond to your comments.

After much personal deliberation, I believe the conservative movement can survive healthy debate and dialog over issues and hopefully my comments on Rumsfeld will be taken in the spirit of collegiality and the utmost respect for you and Hillsdale College.

In any event, any legitimate discussion over the legacy of Donald Rumsfeld must unfortunately include his role as the primary architect of America's disastrous and unnecessary second war in Iraq.

History shows that Rumsfeld, along with Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, and others within the Second Bush Administration (2001-2009), predicated the need to launch a disastrous military invasion against Iraq on the very flawed premise that Saddam Hussein had "weapons of mass destruction."

History now shows that Rumsfeld and the second Bush administration were gravely mistaken about WMD's being in Iraq at that time and the consequences of this blunder of unfathomable proportions, was the loss of over 5 000 American soldiers and over 100,000 innocent Iraqi lives.

Because Rumsfeld was considered the "chief architect" of the second Bush administration's Iraq war policy, any objective discussion over his legacy must include this monumental and historic foreign policy mistake. This was left out of your comments on Rumsfeld.

Kind Regards,

Your Friend and Fellow Conservative,

Lee Enochs