The Certainty of Donald Rumsfeld (Part 1) - NYTimes.com: His confrontational style encouraged me to have my facts down cold before I went in there. He’d destroy you if there was a weakness in your question, and you’d end up giving him the exit ramp he was looking for to get out of a difficult question while scoring points with his sizable fan base on TV.
I don’t think anyone could ever get him to admit regret or question his past actions. It’s not in his DNA, and I don’t think he feels regret for anything. This is a supremely self-assured person who believes he makes the best decisions possible given the information and the situation at hand, and then lets the chips fall where they may.
Critics attacked us because they thought they could do our job better — that if they had the opportunity to interrogate Rumsfeld, by golly they’d break him and get the truth!
Never gonna happen. He is, I believe, exactly who he presents to the world.