![pantslessprogressive: Rumsfeld’s Defense of Known Decisions | New York Times The title of former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld’s new memoir, “Known and Unknown,” comes from a remark he made about whether Iraq had supplied or was willing to supply terrorists with weapons of mass destruction. “Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me,” he quipped in 2002, “because, as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don’t know we don’t know.” Mr. Rumsfeld’s memoir plays a fast and loose game of dodge ball with what are now “known knowns” and “known unknowns” about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The tedious, self-serving volume is filled with efforts to blame others — most notably the C.I.A., the State Department and the Coalition Provisional Authority (in particular George Tenet, Colin L. Powell, Condoleezza Rice and L. Paul Bremer III) — for misjudgments made in the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and the failure to contain an insurgency there that metastasized for years. It is a book that suffers from many of the same flaws that led the administration into what George Packer of The New Yorker has called “a needlessly deadly” undertaking — that is, cherry-picked data, unexamined assumptions and an unwillingness to re-examine past decisions. Not only does Mr. Rumsfeld frequently assume a smug, know-it-all tone — he says he warned President George W. Bush to “tone down any triumphalist rhetoric” in his end-of-major combat-operations speech, made on May 1, 2003, in front of a “Mission Accomplished” banner — but he also displays a tendency, familiar to viewers of his news conferences, to make bold assertions with no pretense of substantiation. [read more] Never forget how incompetent and willfully ignorant this man was, and never forget that he and Dick Cheney spent 30+ years crafting neo-con rhetoric that was ultimately the Bush Administration cabal.](http://28.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lg2krqaTYJ1qzr73ro1_500.jpg)
Rumsfeld’s Defense of Known Decisions | New York Times
The title of former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld’s new memoir, “Known and Unknown,” comes from a remark he made about whether Iraq had supplied or was willing to supply terrorists with weapons of mass destruction. “Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me,” he quipped in 2002, “because, as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”
Mr. Rumsfeld’s memoir plays a fast and loose game of dodge ball with what are now “known knowns” and “known unknowns” about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The tedious, self-serving volume is filled with efforts to blame others — most notably the C.I.A., the State Department and the Coalition Provisional Authority (in particular George Tenet, Colin L. Powell, Condoleezza Rice and L. Paul Bremer III) — for misjudgments made in the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and the failure to contain an insurgency there that metastasized for years. It is a book that suffers from many of the same flaws that led the administration into what George Packer of The New Yorker has called “a needlessly deadly” undertaking — that is, cherry-picked data, unexamined assumptions and an unwillingness to re-examine past decisions.
Not only does Mr. Rumsfeld frequently assume a smug, know-it-all tone — he says he warned President George W. Bush to “tone down any triumphalist rhetoric” in his end-of-major combat-operations speech, made on May 1, 2003, in front of a “Mission Accomplished” banner — but he also displays a tendency, familiar to viewers of his news conferences, to make bold assertions with no pretense of substantiation. [read more]
Never forget how incompetent and willfully ignorant this man was, and never forget that he and Dick Cheney spent 30+ years crafting neo-con rhetoric that was ultimately the Bush Administration cabal.
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