ARTS & FARCES internet

Wouldn’t you just know it. Turns out three years ago, U.S. defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld sat on the board of directors for a company (Zurich’s ABB) that won a US$200 million contract to sell nukes to North Korea. That would be the same North Korea that Rumsfeld now calls a terrorist state and one of the three points of the “axis of evil.” So says Randeep Ramesh in “The two faces of Rumsfeld” published last Friday in The Guardian.

Even though ABB’s chief executive at the time traveled to North Korea to seal the deal and announce the company’s “wide ranging, long-term cooperation agreement” with the country, Rumsfeld has maintained—through remotely-controlled spokespuppets—that he didn’t “recall [the sale of two light water nuclear reactors] being brought before the board at any time.” Even though ABB opened an office in Pyongyang, North Korea the year following the sale of the reactors, Rumsfeld claims his memory lapses persist. Ramesh quotes an ABB spokesman as saying “board members were informed about the project which would deliver systems and equipment for light water reactors.”

Even Paul Wolfowitz—Rumsfeld’s right-hand man—opposed the sale of light water reactors to North Korea.

Shortly after Rumsfeld joined the Bush administration, President Bush ended the initiatives with North Korea, saying he didn’t trust the country. North Korea responded by saying it would build nuclear weapons. Rumsfeld responded by saying that the United States could fight two wars simultaneously.

One would ordinarily wonder how Rumsfeld justifies his behavior, even to himself. But then it all becomes clear with one of Rumsfeld’s classic slices of his personal philosophy: “Well, um, something’s neither good nor bad but thinking makes it so, I suppose—as Shakespeare said.”