Rumsfeld said the U.S. is in 'withdrawal mode, an apology mode.' | John Shinkle/POLITICO Rumsfeld to W.H.: Justify Syria attack

Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says the Obama administration has not yet justified an attack on Syria.

“There really hasn’t been any indication from the administration as to what our national interest is with respect to this particular situation,” Rumsfeld told Fox News’s Neil Cavuto on Wednesday.


“If you think of what’s really important in that region, it’s two things,” he added. “It’s Iran’s nuclear program and the relationship between Iran and Syria, the Assad regime, with respect to funding terrorists that go around killing innocent men, women and children including Americans.”

( See POLITICO’s full Syria coverage)

Asked what he thinks China and Russia’s response may be — both countries have said the U.S. must abide by international law, wait for the United Nations chemical probe results, and should not bypass the U.N. Security Council — Rumsfeld replied, “Well, it’s hard to know.”

“I mean there’s no question that each of those two countries, the People’s Republic of China and Russia, have leaders that are fundamentally opposed to our values and our interests,” he said.

Under President Barack Obama, Rumsfeld said the U.S. is in “withdrawal mode, an apology mode,” and that “vacuum we’ve created is being filled by people who don’t have our values or our interest, and that gives China and Russia an opportunity to do things that are fundamentally against what we as a country and the American people would prefer to have happen.”

( PHOTOS: Scenes from Syria)

Rumsfeld also said Secretary of State John Kerry “has been dealt a pretty bad hand” thanks to Obama’s administration and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s choices over the past four years, calling it “a complicated situation.”

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