Bush disagrees with Rumsfeld comment on Muslims

The White House on Thursday sympathized with Arab-Americans who took offense to a memo that former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld wrote saying that "oil wealth has made Muslims averse to physical labor." Rumsfeld's belief is "not at all in line with the president's views," White House press secretary Dana Perino said. As Pentagon chief, Rumsfeld wrote scores of internal memos which employees called "snowflakes." In May 2004, Rumsfeld wrote that oil wealth had left Muslims detached from the "reality of the work and investment that leads to wealth for the rest of the world." "Too often Muslims are against physical labor, so they bring in Koreans and Pakistanis while their young people remain unemployed," Rumsfeld wrote in one of several memos published by The Washington Post. "An unemployed population is easy to recruit to radicalism."