NEW YORK (AP) – In what is billed as his first interview since being forced out of the top Pentagon post 10 months ago, Donald Rumsfeld says the war in Afghanistan is “a big success,” but U.S. efforts in Iraq are hampered by the failure of its government to establish a political foundation for democracy.

“In Afghanistan, 28 million people are free. They have their own president, they have their own parliament. Improved a lot on the streets,” Rumsfeld says in the October issue of GQ magazine, on newsstands.

While “that’s been a big success,” he said, the Baghdad regime “has not been able to … create an environment hospitable to whatever one wants to call their evolving way of life, a democracy or a representative system, or a freer system. And it’s going to take some time and some effort.”

Rumsfeld stepped down as secretary of defense a day after Republicans lost heavily in the 2006 midterm election and President Bush called for a “new perspective” in Iraq.

He did not comment on the administration’s current “surge” strategy in Iraq, but said the Department of Defense and the U.S. military are not responsible for any failures there or in Afghanistan.

“In a very real sense, the American military cannot lose a battle, they cannot lose a war,” he tells the magazine. “On the other hand, they can’t win the struggle themselves. It requires diplomacy, it requires economic assistance, it requires a range of things that are well beyond the purview of the Department of Defense.

“In terms of what’s going on in Iraq and Afghanistan today, what the Department of Defense is doing is working. What isn’t working is on the diplomatic side.”

In the interview, conducted recently at his ranch near Taos, N.M., the 75-year-old Rumsfeld rambled at length about his career and offered guarded comments on former colleagues, policy decisions in Iraq and his own forced resignation.

But he admitted to no misgivings about his second tour as Pentagon chief, during which he was known for an abrasive manner, and was criticized by lawmakers and by eight retired generals for failing to send enough troops to fight the war in Iraq or provide an effective plan for postwar reconstruction and stability.

“If you’re expecting Don Rumsfeld – out of government now, on his farm in a moment of repose – to play the bitter, angry, reflective fallen hero, ain’t gonna happen,” writes GQ’s Lisa DePaulo. “If he feels any of those things, he’s not showing it … the man does not do regret.”

But later, when asked if he has any “regrets” about the last six years, Rumsfeld replied, “Well, sure. I mean you’d always wish things were perfect, but they never are.”

He said the refusal of Turkey, a NATO ally, to allow U.S. troops to cross its border into Iraq at the outset of the war, gave would-be insurgents “free play for a good period of time. I mean, there’s a dozen things like that.”

As to what he might have done differently, Rumsfeld says, “If you do anything, someone’s not going to like it, someone’s going to be critical of it. So if you’re in the business I was in, that goes with the territory.”

Rumsfeld, the nation’s youngest U.S. defense secretary in the Ford administration and the oldest under Bush, also served four terms in Congress, and as ambassador to NATO and numerous other posts. In the interview he declined to assess that legacy, saying he has “no idea” how he will be remembered, but “I know it will be different. It always is.”

He tells DePaulo he believes President Bush “is a lot more intelligent and curious than people give him credit for,” and has been demeaned by “eastern media” in the same way it deprecated three of Bush’s Republican predecessors:

“Eisenhower, considered to be a bumbler. Bad syntax. Gerald Ford, the best athlete they had in decades. And they called him a stumblebum and … made fun of him. And Ronald Reagan. You read his diaries now and the man is remarkable,” Rumsfeld says in the interview.

He noted that President Truman left office in 1952 with a 19 or 20 percent approval rating, “and yet what was accomplished in his presidency, with all those institutions that served the world and our country for 50 years, it’s just amazing.”

But when asked whether he thinks Bush “hopes he’s Harry Truman in 50 years,” Rumsfeld was reticent. “I don’t know,” he said.

To another question, Rumsfeld said he couldn’t recall the last time he and Bush spoke. Do you miss him? “Um, no,” he said.

How about Colin Powell? Are you still close?

“No. We’re not close. Never were.”

Vice President Dick Cheney?

“I still see Cheney.”

Will he join Cheney to watch election returns next year as they did in the last two elections?

“I don’t know. He’s a busy guy.”

Rumsfeld said that although he had twice offered to quit and even submitted a letter of resignation to Bush after the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, he denied resigning a day before the 2006 elections as one news report claimed.

“No,” he said, “but it was very clear in my mind that if the Democrats won the House or the Senate or both … that it would be best for the department if someone else was there.”

Although Rumsfeld said he is warmly received by many people, Taos is not always cordial. His grandchildren were heckled at a July 4 parade and he has been called a “warmonger” and “our favorite local war criminal.”

Asked by DePaulo if that was “difficult,” Rumsfeld replied, “No, not really. It’s a free country. People can say what they want.”

AP-ES-09-09-07 1757EDT