Rumsfeld's memoir begins with his personal background as a Chicagoan, Princeton wrestler, and Navy pilot, and businessman. But the bulk of the book, and the bulk of the books interest, involves his political life. I felt it was generally an honest book, not an extreme partisian diatribe. My impression was that he tried to give an honest assessment of his political beliefs and management style. However, most of us recognize that the way we see ourselves is not necessarily the way others see us. He admits to being "tough" as a boss, and to be challenging those who work for him. His feeling, especially as the Secretary of Defense, is that the military men who report to him are strong and confident, and would not and should not intimidated by his style. But the frequently quoted opinions of the generals who worked for him give a different view. (Read Gordon and Trainor's "Cobra II" for an account of the pre-war planning from a military point of view). People interested in advancing their careers do have a tendency of complying with the desires of the boss, and there have been many reports of generals who served under him as seeing the benefit of having their recommendations parallel the direction of the boss.

He did address many of the Bush era criticisms leveled against him and President Bush very directly, and gave a logical explanations and clarifications. At other times, I thought his explanations might have been incomplete, or evasive. An example that comes to mind was waterboarding at Guantanamo. Rumsfeld states that no waterboarding was done at Guantanamo by people under his command, and he issued orders for humane treatment of prisoners. One could get the impression that perhaps waterboarding wasn't done by the U.S. but what he was saying that it wasn't done by HIS department without getting into too much detail about what the CIA may have done.

Another area I was interested in reading more about was the Pentagon's planning and implementation for post-war Iraq. I think he downplayed the role of the Defense Department, especially through the influence of Paul Wolfowitz and Doug Feith, in the intelligence errors and push for the Iraq War. It seems that one of his staffers, Doug Feith, had primary responsibility for post-war planning, but there isn't much discussion of the post-war failures, other than references to problems with the State Department. It was pretty clear from other books, especially the first part of Corn & Isikoff's "Hubris", and Chandrasikaran's "Imperial Life in the Emerald City", that post war planning was a source of distrust and power struggles between Defense and State, and as a result the proper planning and staffing never was properlly implemented. Rumsfeld does acknowledge some of that tension between the two Departments without accepting nor assigning blame. It left me with the feeling that by not addressing some of those post-war issues, that he was distancing himself and the Defense Department for any problems, which is pretty much what the State Department had done. But most sources do say that the Defense Department had the primary role in this regard, so any faults probably lie within his Department.

All in all, I think he gave a good account of his role in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. There were problems, but as he said, "stuff happens", and there are no perfect plans in wars. The book is not about blame, and what little blame is assigned was not with him, Bush, or Cheney, but tended to be more with the Intelligence, staffers, State Department, L. Paul Bremmer, or left to the reader to determine.
This shouldn't be the only book one reads about Iraq to get a clear picture, but it is one to inclulde if you're interested in the total picture.