It's with great sadness that I learned of the death of former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Donald Rumsfeld had a distinguished career in the military, as a Republican politician, and as a trusted advisor to many Presidents. It is unfortunate that his name was pulled through the mud by the leftist media determined to assassinate his character for his involvement in the Iraq War. Public servants like Donald Rumsfeld deserve better.

As many of you know, I have long been a supporter of the Iraq War as a just war that was derailed by just a few enormous mistakes. While I don't often say this, it's worth mentioning on this day we remember the life of Donald Rumsfeld. Of the major mistakes made in the Iraq War, Donald Rumsfeld was directly responsible for none of them.

In trying to intimidate his domestic and foreign enemies, Saddam Hussein successfully fooled the United States CIA and DIA into believing he was actively developing WMDs throughout the early 2000s and 1990s. Even without WMDs, it's my belief that the Iraq War was still just.

The failure to have a government in waiting when US troops captured Baghdad was a failure of George Tenet, the director of the CIA; who believed Ahmed Chalabi's claims of an existing and structured Iraqi National Congress ready to take over the moment Saddam was gone.

The largest failure in the Iraq War that led to disaster was Paul Bremer's strict De-Ba'athification policy; which dismantled the existing military and police forces, leaving the only armed citizens of Iraq permanently without work and without a way to feed their families. Paul Bremer has since tried to blame Secretary Rumsfeld for this policy, the general consensus is that Rumsfeld and his military commanders were just as stunned by the policy as everyone else.

As Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld saw the two fastest military conquests of a country in world history. The long, drawn out occupations of these countries were political failures, not military failures.

It's my hope that as we celebrate our independence this weekend, the citizens of the United States can take a minute and extend the posthumous grace to Donald Rumsefeld that he too rarely got at the end of his career and in the final years of his storied and accomplished life as a public servant.