The recent US Defence Secretary also once served as Defence Secretary to President Ford. Failing in a bid to become Republican candidate for President, he then entered business to became a senior executive with several major companies. In 1983 President Reagan appointed him as Special Presidential Envoy to the Middle East, where he supervised the warming relationship with Saddam Hussein into an alliance in which the US was to supply intelligence, military technology and the necessary ingredients to make weapons of mass destruction.

What Rumsfeld should have said if he was honest in 2003 was "Well I know that Saddam used to have WMD anyway, because I arranged for him to get them!"

Out of government again, Rumsfeld secured a number of senior business appointments in the 1990s, including CEO of General Instruments and a board position with Gulfstream Aerospace (where Secretary of State Colin Powell was another board member). The latter company was acquired by weapons makers General Dynamics in 1999, and Rumsfeld sold his stock for a tidy US$11 million.

Rumsfeld was also on the board of Swiss-based engineering company ABB. The problem with this was that they sold two nuclear reactors to North Korea in a US$200 million deal. Rumsfeld's selective amnesia, already apparent concerning his earlier dealings with Saddam Hussein, has kicked into overdrive on this issue. Apparently it bypassed his attention span altogether, even though it can be proved he attended board meetings where the matter was discussed.