What do you know? Donald Rumsfeld didn't always say Iraqi democracy was 'unrealistic'

Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld knows what went wrong in Iraq: The United States tried to promote democracy there, rather than not invading to begin with or installing its own dictator after having invaded. It's a fascinating rewrite of the past for what it says about the Bush administration mindset—the decision to push a disastrous war of choice is never, ever to be questioned—and because it's so different from what Rumsfeld himself was saying in the early years of the war. Mother Jones's Miles Johnson rounds up a few choice "yay, Iraqi democracy" quotes from Rumsfeld. Like in May 2003, when Rumsfeld told Wolf Blitzer that:

Well, the wonderful thing about democracy is that when someone sticks their head up, somebody doesn't like it. And therefore, there will be that process, just like in our country. There will be a debate. There will be a discussion. And ultimately, people would decide who they want. It won't be use who will be deciding who is going to be doing anything. It is going to be the Iraqi people, over time.

And in November 2005, when he said:

Well certainly the success that's being achieved there, if one thinks about it, there were elections in January, then there was, October 15 in Iraq, there was a referendum on the constitution that had been drafted by the people elected by the Iraqi people, and now we're looking towards a third election in a single year on December 15, where the people will be electing people under their new constitution. That is an enormous step forward for the people of Iraq.

Maybe Rumsfeld was being a well-behaved Bush administration mouthpiece when he touted the progress of democracy in Iraq. It would be interesting to hear about that, for sure—how he expressed his reservations in internal conversations, how George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice and the rest of them responded. But it seems a lot more likely that when Rumsfeld claims to have questioned whether "our particular template of democracy is appropriate for other countries at every moment of their histories" or whether it was "unrealistic" for Iraq, he's just offering up some 20-20 hindsight.