Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced Monday that he will remain in President George W. Bush's cabinet, saying Bush personally asked him to continue and that he accepted with enthusiasm. Rumsfeld, 72, made the remarks while traveling to Kuwait and Afghanistan, where he planned to attend the inauguration of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
Rumsfeld declined to commit to a full four-year term and refused to give any timeline for withdrawing the roughly 135,000 US troops stationed in Iraq. He defended past troop-level decisions, saying a larger force would have increased vulnerability and reinforced the perception of an occupation.
Looking back at his first term, Rumsfeld acknowledged that failing to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was "clearly a disappointment." He also admitted to difficult moments during the Abu Ghraib scandal and the Iraq invasion, but stopped short of saying he had seriously considered resigning.
Transforming the US military remains his central priority. That effort includes modernizing army structures, reshaping global troop deployments by reducing forces in Europe and Asia, revising the defense budget process, and rewriting outdated war contingency plans. Rumsfeld also emphasized the expanded role of special forces, calling them a critical element of American military capability going forward.
Historical summary. TurkishPress restated this AFP wire report, first published in December 2004, in its own words.