Donald Rumsfeld, born in 1932, American politician and secretary of defense under President Gerald Ford from 1975 to 1977 and under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2006. Rumsfeld held a variety of government positions in four different presidential administrations. When President Ford appointed him secretary of defense, he was the youngest person in U.S. history to serve in that position.

Rumsfeld was born in Chicago, Illinois. After graduating from Princeton University in 1954, he served in the United States Navy as an aviator for three years. In 1962 he was elected to the United States House of Representatives from Illinois, and he was reelected in 1964, 1966, and 1968. Rumsfeld resigned from the House in 1969 to work in the administration of President Richard Nixon as the director of the Office of Economic Opportunity. In 1973 he became the U.S. ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). When Gerald Ford became president in 1974, Rumsfeld headed Ford’s transition team. In 1975 Ford appointed him secretary of defense.

After Ford lost the 1976 election, Rumsfeld went to work in private business. Among his positions were chief executive officer of a pharmaceutical company and chief executive officer of an electronics and wireless communications company. While in the private sector, Rumsfeld continued to work in the government, acting as a special envoy to the Middle East for President Ronald Reagan and heading up a bipartisan committee examining the threat of ballistic missiles to the United States. After George W. Bush was elected president in 2000, he appointed Rumsfeld as secretary of defense overseeing the Department of Defense.

As secretary, Rumsfeld became one of the most visible, high-profile members of the Bush administration. Upon taking office, he became an advocate for a more streamlined and highly mobile military. From the outset of his tenure as secretary and head of the Pentagon, political observers described Rumsfeld as one of the more hawkish members of the Bush administration, someone inclined to push for decisive military action, first in Afghanistan and later in Iraq. During the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan, Rumsfeld frequently appeared on nationally televised broadcasts to deliver press conferences and updates on the war. He said the U.S. priorities in Afghanistan were to remove the Taliban government and to vanquish the al-Qaeda terrorist network.

Prior to the 2003 war in Iraq, Rumsfeld criticized Germany and France for not being more supportive of U.S. efforts to form a military force to oust Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. Rumsfeld came under criticism for his assertions that Iraq had an active program to acquire and develop weapons of mass destruction. In January 2003 Rumsfeld charged that Iraq had tried to obtain significant quantities of uranium from Africa for use in nuclear weapons. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), however, disclosed that the charge was based on forged documents, and a U.S. intelligence expert found no evidence for the claim. After the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq, Rumsfeld said he saw no need to send more U.S. troops to Iraq, despite some criticism that the reconstruction and occupation of Iraq were not going smoothly. See also U.S.-Iraq War.

In 2004 critics said Rumsfeld had to take responsibility for abuses inflicted by U.S. troops on prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Critics suggested that Rumsfeld, in part, was responsible for a culture within the American military that gave rise to the abuses. Rumsfeld's defenders said the events at Abu Ghraib were isolated events that did not reflect U.S. policy. Despite his renunciation of the events at Abu Ghraib, the controversy over the internationally publicized scandal led to some speculation that Rumsfeld would not join George W. Bush in his second term as president. But Rumsfeld remained in the Bush administration after Bush was reelected in 2004, and he continued to be an ardent public supporter of the U.S. presence in Iraq. In the second Bush term, Rumsfeld particularly tried to underscore what he said were significant strides to move Iraq toward democracy and toward a politically and financially stable future.

Into Bush’s second term, Rumsfeld was not as visible a presence as he had been during the early days of the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, when he was seemingly a permanent fixture at press conferences. Still, into 2005 and 2006, Rumsfeld continued to defend the administration against critics who maintained the United States was not adhering to the Geneva Conventions regarding the rights of wartime detainees and combatants. And he continued to insist that Iraq was on the path to cohesion, self-rule, and democracy. Rumsfeld defended the Defense Department against critics who said it was not doing enough to provide troops with armor for Humvees and other equipment that could have saved U.S. lives in the fight against the Iraq insurgency. In a move that surprised some observers, in a late 2005 visit to U.S. troops in Iraq, Rumsfeld seemed to suggest the possibility of a U.S. troop reduction in 2006.

In early 2006 criticism of Rumsfeld resurfaced when six retired generals called for his resignation. Various reasons were given, but a common criticism was that Rumsfeld had underestimated the number of U.S. forces that would be needed to keep Iraq stable after the U.S. invasion. Two of the retired generals—Marine Corps Lieutenant General Gregory Newbold and former U.S. Central Command chief General Anthony Zinni—said they opposed the Iraq invasion, arguing that it had detracted from the war against al-Qaeda. Army Major General Paul Eaton accused Rumsfeld of being “incompetent strategically, operationally, and tactically.” Army Major General John Batiste, who commanded the 1st Infantry Division in Iraq from 2004 to 2005, argued that the secretary had violated fundamental military principles in his handling of the Iraq war, and Major General Charles H. Swannack, Jr., who commanded the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division in Iraq, charged Rumsfeld with micromanaging the war without understanding “the dynamic of counterinsurgency warfare.” Retired Army Major General John Riggs also added his voice to the highly unusual calls for the defense secretary’s resignation. A number of prominent Democrats, including New York senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, also called for Rumsfeld’s resignation for his alleged mishandling of the war.

President Bush quickly came to Rumsfeld’s defense, saying he was doing a “fine job.” The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Peter Pace, and several other retired generals, including former Central Command chief Tommy Franks and former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Richard Myers, also defended Rumsfeld. Pace cited his “dedication,” “patriotism,” and “work ethic.” Some retired generals supporting Rumsfeld said the calls for resignation set a dangerous precedent by questioning civilian leadership of the military. No active-duty generals called for Rumsfeld to step down, but observers noted that active-duty officers are expected to resign if they publicly disagree with their superiors.

Going into the November 2006 midterm elections, Bush continued to defend Rumsfeld, but when the elections resulted in a Democratic Party majority in both the U.S. House and Senate, Rumsfeld stepped down. The election results were widely seen as a rejection of the Iraq War, which was increasingly unpopular in public opinion polls. The Bush administration reportedly did not want Rumsfeld to be the administration’s public face when the Democratic majority began to conduct congressional inquiries. The inquiries were expected to probe the prewar intelligence that led to the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the subsequent conduct of the war. In his parting remarks at a White House press conference, Rumsfeld said: “The first war of the 21st century … is not well known; it was not well understood. It is complex for people to comprehend.”