More than 400 people welcomed former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to the Star City Thursday evening. Rumsfeld spoke at Roanoke's Jefferson Center, as part of a book tour to promote his memoir "Known and Unknown."
To start off the evening, Rumsfeld shared his thoughts on the current state of Iraq and Afghanistan.
"It is going to take them time to find their way. I have never been one to believe the United States could go in and build other countries. It isn't possible for other nations to go in and make it all better for them,” says Rumsfeld.
The real question though, in his opinion, was the war worth the cost?
"The world is clearly a better place without Saddam Hussein, and the brutal regime. He killed hundreds of thousands of people. He used chemical weapons against the Kurds, his own people. He defied 17 U.N. resolutions,” noted Rumsfeld.
The former secretary also touched on disagreements between the Department of Defense, State Department, and the National Security Council.
"It seems to me, in large measure, it isn't it. It is a difference of perspective difference of views, difference of positions, and that is fair,” said Rumsfeld.
However, there was one answer that got quite the reaction. That was the impact the defense budget has on the climbing debt.
"It is not a result of the defense establishment. You could abolish the defense department, and you wouldn't make a dent in that debt,” says Rumsfeld.
And it was answers like that, which gave people who attended a first hand look into his job as the former Secretary of Defense.
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