Rumsfeld

United States ex-defence head Rumsfeld defends Iraq war handling

Former US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld remains largely defiant about the Iraq war, saying in a new book that had Saddam Hussein remained in power, the Middle East would be "far more perilous than it's today".

Mr Rumsfeld, 78, has written an autobiography due out next week.

He concedes he could have sent more troops, and that internal United States rivalries hampered post-war reconstruction.

Leaked excerpts have been published by the Washington Post and NY Times.

On the question of troops, he says in the 800-page Known and Unknown: "In retrospect, there may have been times when more troops could have helped."

But he says that if senior military officers had reservations about the size of the invading force, they didn't inform him.

And as the conflict continued, US commanders, even when asked repeatedly for their views, didn't ask him for more troops or disagree with the strategy, he adds.

Although he describes George W Bush as "a far more formidable president than his popular image", he also suggests the former president was at fault for not doing more to resolve disagreements among senior advisers.

Mr Bush "didn't always receive, and may not have insisted on, a timely consideration of his options before he made a decision, nor did he always receive effective implementation of the decisions he made", Mr Rumsfeld writes.

"There were far too many hands on the steering wheel," he writes elsewhere; it was "a formula for running the truck into a ditch".

Regrets

He adds he regrets some of the quips he became famous for, such as "stuff happens" about the early looting in post-war Iraq, or his remark about "old Europe" - meaning Germany and France - not supporting the use of force in Iraq.

He also confirms the National Security Council was rife with tensions between the Pentagon and state department, which some critics had blamed on him.

Mr Rumsfeld says his greatest regret wasn't leaving office immediately after the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal.