Rummy's Rules

Buzzflash posted a link to the Toronto Star's delightful column of Rumsfeld quotes. I had almost forgotten he was such a joker. Here goes:

“Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, 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. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones,” Rumsfeld, Feb. 12, 2002.

Was it the known unknowns or the unknown ones that got us in trouble in Iraq, I wonder?

“Stuff happens. It’s untidy, and freedom’s untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things.” Rumsfeld said on April 11, 2003 in response to large scale disorder in the city, just days after Baghdad was captured.

See also "I have no problem with chaos, just NIMBY."

“You go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time,” Rumsfeld on Dec. 8, 2004 told a U.S. soldier in Kuwait who asked him why U.S. troops had to dig through local landfills for pieces of rusted scrap metal and glass to provide armor for their vehicles before driving into Iraq.

Why do they refer to those big metal things in which all infantry troups travel as "armored vehicles," I wonder?

“His regime has large, unaccounted for stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, including VX, sarin, mustard gas, anthrax, botulism and possibly smallpox. And he has an active program to acquire and develop nuclear weapons,” Rumsfeld said on Jan. 20, 2003. Before the Iraq war.

None of these were found. Hmm. Was this a known known or a known unknown, do you suppose?

“We know where they are,” Rumsfeld said on March 30, 2003 in the days after the Iraq invasion. “They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.”

Yes. Definitely one of the known knowns, wouldn't you say?

“The Gulf War in the 1990s lasted five days on the ground. I can’t tell you if the use of force in Iraq today would last five days, or five weeks or five months. But it certainly isn’t going to last any longer than that,” Rumsfeld said on Nov. 14, 2002, three months before the invasion.

Certainly not five years, for example. Or until pigs fly.

Trouble, for instance.