Eric Kleefeld February 9, 2011, 3:27 PM

During his interview last night on Sean Hannity’s TV show, former Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld bemoaned the sad fact about the prison camp at Guantanamo — namely, according to Rumsfeld, that the Bush administration was unable to convince people of just how great it is!

“It is an exceedingly well-run prison. And the folks down there have done, and are doing, an excellent job,” said Rumsfeld. “The heartbreaking thing with respect to Guantanamo is not that there’s anything wrong with that — it’s one of the finest prison systems in the world. What is awkward is the fact that, for whatever reason, the administration was incapable of persuading people that that was a first class operation, that they were not torturing people, they were not hurting people.

“And it was then, and it is today, a fine operation, and the men and women who operate it for the United States military deserve a lot of credit. And they’ve taken a lot of heat, unfairly.”

On the other hand, earlier in the interview, Rumsfeld did take heart in the fact that Gitmo is still there, despite the fact that both President Obama and his Republican opponent John McCain had spoken out against it during the 2008 election.

“During the campaign, he and his opponent both were quite critical of the Bush administration. And president, now president but candidate Obama was critical of Guantanamo,” said Rumsfeld. “He was critical of indefinite detention for unlawful combatants. He was critical of military commissions.

“And here we are two plus years later, and all of those things are there — not because anyone wants him to be there, but because they were the best solutions. And the structure that President Bush and his administration put in place, it seems to me, is today accepted as a good structure, as things that were needed. Not things that we wanted but given the nature of terrorism in the world, things that were needed.”

Donald Rumsfeld, Guantanamo Bay, Sean Hannity