Donald Rumsfeld Quotes

Donald Rumsfeld. Love him or hate him, you've gotta admit: a lot of people hate him.

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.

You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.

There are known knowns, things we know that we know; and there are known unknowns, things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns, things we do not know we don't know.

Those who made the decisions with imperfect knowledge will be judged in hindsight by those with considerably more information at their disposal and time for reflection.

And for once, Donald Rumsfeld, in the news at the time over the Iraq war made sense to me: "As we know," he said, famously, "there are known knowns-things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns-things we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns- things we don't know we don't know.

Right now, I am in Fallujah. I am in Darfur. I am on Sixty-third and Park having dinner with Ellen Barkin and Ron Perelman... Right now, I'm on Lafayette and Astor waiting to hit you up for change so I can get high. I'm taking a walk through the Rose Garden with George Bush. I'm helping Donald Rumsfeld get a good night's sleep...I was in that cave with Osama, and on that plane with Mohamed Atta...And what I want you to know is that your work has barely begun. And what I want you to trust is the efficacy of divine love if practiced consciously. And what I need you to believe is that if you hate who I love, you do not know me at all. And make no mistake, "Who I Love" is every last one. I am every last one. People ask of me: Where are you? Where are you?...Verily I ask of you to ask yourself: Where are you? Where are you?

There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know. —DONALD RUMSFELD

When Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld conflate what is good for Lockheed, Halliburton, Carlyle and Gilead with what is good for the United States and indeed the world, it is a form of projection with uniquely dangerous consequences.

If we know anything, it is that weakness is provocative.

I think you can be an enemy of Saddam Hussein even if Donald Rumsfeld is also an enemy of Saddam Hussein.

Everyone’s saying you can’t do anything until you can do everything, and in life I’ve never found that to be the case. To me, first you crawl, then you walk, then you run. And so let’s get on with it. Let’s stick something in the ground and not pretend that it’s perfect.

Politics doesn’t require talent, intelligence, or good looks. Truly, someone like Donald Rumsfeld, a mediocre government functionary with no discernible talent, intelligence, or charm, is a greater international celebrity than Mick Jagger. Rumsfeld, despite being a has-been, is known in every corner of Asia, the Middle East, and Africa for his insanity and arrogance, while Jagger is admired by a mere couple hundred million music enthusiasts, huddled mostly in the First World.

You’re seeing someone else, aren’t you?" Seeing someone else? How on earth could that explain any of this? Why would seeing someone else necessitate bringing home a middle­-aged woman, a teenaged punk and an American with a leather jacket and a Rod Stewart haircut? What would the story have been? But then, after reflection, I realised that Penny had probably been here before, and therefore knew that infidelity can usually provide the answer to any domestic mystery. If I had walked in with Sheena Easton and Donald Rumsfeld, Penny would probably have scratched her head for a few seconds before saying exactly the same thing. In other circumstances, on other evenings, it would have been the right conclusion, too; I used to be pretty resourceful when I was being unfaithful to Cindy, even if I do say so myself. I once drove a new BMW into a wall, simply because I needed to explain a four­-hour delay in getting home from work. Cindy came out into the street to inspect the crumpled bonnet, looked at me, and said, “You’re seeing someone else, aren’t you?” I denied it, of course. But then, anything – smashing up a new car, persuading Donald Rumsfeld to come to an Islington flat in the early hours of New Year’s Day – is easier than actually telling the truth. That look you get, the look which lets you see right through the eyes and down into the place where she keeps all the hurt and the rage and the loathing... Who wouldn’t go that extra yard to avoid it?

Don't blame the boss. He has enough problems.

every day is filled with numerous opportunities for serious error. Enjoy it.

But the main problem was that we failed to allow for what Donald Rumsfeld famously called the “unknown unknowns

After Princeton, the years seem like a blur, but the days seem more like rapid fire. - Donald Rumsfeld in Year of Magical Thinking

Secretary of Defense once said, “You go to the zombie apocalypse with the tech you have not the tech you want.” Of course Donald Rumsfeld didn’t say exactly that, but the meaning is similar.

The pharmaceutical companies that fund med schools don’t want this fact realized, and therefore the information is suppressed. Many pharmaceutical companies and doctors make money by treating symptoms rather than causations. When causations are understood, cures are oftentimes a given. Cures don’t make money. Why was Aspartame released into the population despite evidence of the damage it causes while Donald Rumsfeld was CEO of Searle? Why do you think George Bush was on the board of directors for Eli Lilly9 drug manufacturing? To counteract the mass genocide he perpetuates? Why do you think politicians are so healthy and live so long? What do they know that they aren’t telling us? I’m not saying this is all a conspiracy to thin the population, but pertinent health information should be public knowledge rather than deliberately suppressed. If this information were taught in schools, unethical drug companies would loose their control on the world.

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—there are things we do not know we don’t know.—Donald Rumsfeld21

When surprise occurs, such as when the economy enters an unexpected recession or a conflict begins seemingly out the blue, the natural reaction is to immediately ask who made the “obvious” mistake. It is much easier to believe that our leaders are incompetent than to accept the less pleasant reality that ours is a world where uncertainty and surprise are the norm, not the exception.

so deep, “you could have brought the whole of ExxonMobil out there and they wouldn’t have been able to operate that thing worth a damn,” said Philip J. Carroll Jr., a former president of Shell U.S.A., who was appointed by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to serve as Paul Bremer’s

We were forecasting based on the information in front of us—WYSIATI—but the chapters we wrote first were probably easier than others, and our commitment to the project was probably then at its peak. But the main problem was that we failed to allow for what Donald Rumsfeld famously called the “unknown unknowns.

When will the dropping of bombs on innocent civilians by the United States, and invading and occupying their country, without their country attacking or threatening the US, become completely discredited? When will the use of depleted uranium and cluster bombs and CIA torture renditions become things that even men like George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld will be too embarrassed to defend? Australian/British journalist John Pilger has noted that in George Orwell’s 1984 ‘three slogans dominate society: war is peace, freedom is slavery and ignorance is strength. Today’s slogan, war on terrorism, also reverses meaning. The war is terrorism.

I can’t help but quote the former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld, who quite wisely said: “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.

Agreement can always be reached by increasing the generality of the conclusion; when this is done, the form is generally preserved but only the illusion of policy is created.

Whatever your position, reach out to those who know more than you do, and have been around longer than you have. Find those people. Listen carefully. And learn.

The harder I work, the luckier I am. —Stephen Leacock

The trouble with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money. —Margaret Thatcher T

Let your words be as few as will express the sense you wish to convey and above all let what you say be true. —Stonewall Jackson

The better part of one’s life consists of his friendships. —Abraham Lincoln

What you measure improves.” A corollary rule in the military is that “You get what you inspect, not what you expect.

People are policy! Without the best people in place, the best ideas don’t matter. —DR. ED FEULNER

No, it turns out Saddam Hussein didn't have weapons of mass destruction. And how crazy does that make Saddam? All he had to do was tell Hans Blix, 'Look anywhere you want. Look under the bed. Look beneath the couch. Look behind the toilet tank in the third presidential palace on the left, but keep your mitts off my copies of Maxim.' And Saddam could have gone on dictatoring away until Donald Rumsfeld gets elected head of the World Council of Churches. But no . . .

Beginning in the fall of 2001, the U.S. military dropped flyers over Afghanistan offering bounties of between $5,000 and $25,000 for the names of men with ties to al Qaeda and the Taliban. “This is enough money to take care of your family, your village, your tribe, for the rest of your life,” one flyer read. (The average annual income in Afghanistan at the time was less than $300.) The flyers fell, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said, “like snowflakes in December in Chicago.” (Unlike many in Bush’s inner circle, Rumsfeld was a veteran; he served as a navy pilot in the 1950s.)82 As hundreds of men were rounded up abroad, the Bush administration considered where to put them. Taking over the federal penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kansas, and reopening Alcatraz, closed since 1963, were both considered but rejected because, from Kansas or California, suspected terrorists would be able to appeal to American courts and under U.S. state and federal law. Diego Garcia, an island in the Indian Ocean, was rejected because it happened to be a British territory, and therefore subject to British law. In the end, the administration chose Guantánamo, a U.S. naval base on the southeastern end of Cuba. No part of either the United States or of Cuba, Guantánamo was one of the known world’s last no-man’s-lands. Bush administration lawyer John Yoo called it the “legal equivalent of outer space.

These are a substantial number of “they” who once a year meet to deliberate the fate of national economies and, hence, entire populations. Many of them also believe in the mandate of eugenics, the practice of improving the human race to include reducing the population. Know that we do not have the names of every attendee. Only those who authorize the release of their names get mentioned in the public media. Daniel Estulin, author of The True Story of the Bilderberg Group, wrote that the group’s membership and meeting participants have represented a “who’s who” of the world power elite with familiar names like David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Gordon Brown, Angela Merkel, Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, Larry Summers, Tim Geithner, Lloyd Blankfein, George Soros, Donald Rumsfeld, Rupert Murdoch, other heads of state, influential senators, congressmen, and parliamentarians, Pentagon and NATO brass, members of European royalty, selected media figures, and invited others. Such invitees have included President Obama along with many of his top officials. Estulin said that also represented at Bilderberg meetings are leading figures from the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), IMF, World Bank, the Trilateral Commission, EU, and powerful central bankers from the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank (ECB), and the Bank of England. David Rockefeller, the head of the Rockefeller family financial empire, is believed to have been a leading Bilderberg attendee for years. Other wealthy elite members merely send representatives.

There are no "knowns." There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don't know.

Есть известная известность. Есть вещи, которые мы знаем, что знаем. Есть известная неизвестность. То есть, есть вещи, которые мы знаем, что не знаем. Но существует еще и неизвестная неизвестность. Есть вещи, которые мы не знаем, что не знаем.

Bank, NATO, the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, and the Organization of American States,

[T]here 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—there are things we do not know we don’t know.—Donald Rumsfeld

Avinash Kaushik, author and Digital Marketing Evangelist at Google, says former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld knew a thing or two about analytics. According to Rumsfeld: There are known knowns; there are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns; that is to say there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns — there are things we do not know, we don’t know.

difficult situation, the Iraqi civilian trying to care for a family amid chaos and violence. They are the people who pay every day with blood and tears for the failures of high officials and powerful institutions. The run-up to the war is particularly significant because it also laid the shaky foundation for the derelict occupation that followed, and that constitutes the major subject of this book. While the Bush administration—and especially Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and L. Paul Bremer III—bear much of the responsibility for the mishandling of the occupation in 2003 and early 2004, blame also must rest with the leadership of the U.S. military, who didn’t prepare the U.S. Army for the challenge it faced, and then wasted a year by using counterproductive tactics that were employed in unprofessional ignorance of the basic tenets of counter-insurgency warfare. The undefeated Saddam Hussein of 1991 The 2003 U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq can’t be viewed in isolation. The chain of events began more than a decade earlier with the botched close of the 1991 Gulf War and then it continued in the U.S. effort to contain Saddam Hussein in the years that followed.

During a security briefing at the White House, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld breaks some tragic news: “Mr President, three Brazilian soldiers were killed yesterday while supporting U.S. troops.” “My God!” shrieks President George W. Bush, and he buries his head in his hands. He remains stunned and silent for a full minute. Eventually, he looks up, takes a deep breath, and asks Rumsfeld: “How many is a brazillion?

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld wouldn’t acknowledge that there was an insurgency. (Rumsfeld was old enough to know, from Vietnam days, that defeating an insurgency required a counterinsurgency strategy, which in turn would leave tens of thousands of U.S. troops in Iraq for years, maybe decades—whereas he just wanted to get in, get out, and move on to oust the next tyrant standing in the way of America’s post–Cold War dominance.) Out

Attempts to Close the Detention Center The United States Detention Center on the grounds of the Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba was established in January of 2002 by the U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld. It was designated as the site for a prison camp, euphemistically called a detention center, to detain prisoners taken in Afghanistan and to a lesser degree from the battlefields of Iraq, Somalia and Asia. The prison was built to hold extremely dangerous individuals and has the facilities to be able to interrogate these detainees in what was said to be “an optimal setting.” Since these prisoners were technically not part of a regular military organization representing a country, the Geneva Conventions did not bind the United States to its rules. The legality of their incarceration is questionable under International Law. This would lead one to the conclusion that this facility was definitely not a country club. Although, in most cases these prisoners were treated humanely, there were obvious exceptions, when the individuals were thought to have pertinent information. It was also the intent of the U.S. Government not to bring them into the United States, where they would be afforded prescribed legal advantages and a more humane setting. Consequently, to house these prisoners, this Spartan prison was constructed at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base instead of on American soil. Here they were out of sight and far removed from any possible legal entanglements that would undoubtedly regulate their treatment. Many of the detainees reported abuses and torture at the facility, which were categorically denied. In 2005 Amnesty International called the facility the “Gulag of our times.” In 2007 and 2008, during his campaign for the Presidency, Obama pledged to close the Detention Center at Guantánamo Bay. After winning the presidential election, he encouraged Congress to close the detention center, without success. Again, he attempted to close the facility on May 3, 2013. At that time, the Senate stopped him by voting to block the necessary funds for the closure. The Republican House remained adamant in their policy towards the President, showing no signs of relenting. It was not until thaw of November of 2014 that any glimmer of hope became apparent. Despite Obama’s desire to close the detention center, he also knew that the Congress, headed by his opposing party, would not revisit this issue any time soon, and if anything were to happen, it would have to be by an executive order. The number has constantly decreased and is now said to be fewer than 60 detainees. There are still problems regarding some of these more aggressive prisoners from countries that do not want them back. It is speculated that eventually some of them may come to the United States to face a federal court. Much is dependent on President-Elect Trump as to what the future holds regarding these incarcerated people.

Why would the United States risk its entire standing as a force for peace and stability, its so-called ‘soft power’? Why would the U.S. risk creating instability in the entire oil-producing world, perhaps even the risk of a new oil price shock and a global economic depression, in order to strike Iraq? The official Washington answer was that Saddam Hussein had an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction and that he had ties to Al Qaida terrorists. Was that sufficient to explain the clear obsession of George W. Bush, Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and others in Washington for a new Iraq war? Many were not convinced. Their skepticism was confirmed, but only after 130,000 American troops had been firmly entrenched in Iraq.

A small group of zealots undermined our golden opportunity to pursue peace, not war. Little did we dream that they had a vastly different “vision” of the New World Order. That group included U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith who held the number three position at the Pentagon, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, a Wolfowitz protégé, who later served as Cheney’s Chief of Staff before his dismissal, John R. Bolton who was assigned to the State Department to keep Secretary of State Colin Powell in check, and Elliott Abrams, appointed to head the Middle East policy at the National Security Council. Apparently all envisioned a world dominated by the U.S. – economically and militarily.

Years later, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld famously brought public attention to the concept of “known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns.

The Bohemian Grove has held secret meetings for the global elite since 1873 in a redwood forest of northern California. In addition to Republican presidents Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan, and George H. W. Bush, members have included James Baker, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, David Rockefeller, William Casey, and Henry Kissinger. Each year, the members don red, black, and silver robes and conduct a ritual in which they worship a giant stone owl.

Ci sono cose che sappiamo di sapere. Ci sono cose che sappiamo di non sapere. Ma ci sono anche cose che non sappiamo di non sapere.

Vai in guerra con l'esercito che hai, non con l'esercito che vorresti avere.

congressman who served on the science committee, a young Republican named Donald Rumsfeld

Operatives who sought to block the Church and Pike Committees, like Donald Rumsfeld and Bill Barr, became high-ranking members of future Republican administrations.

Between 1983 and 1988, Searle Pharmaceuticals CEO Donald Rumsfeld, acting as Ronald Reagan’s envoy in Iraq, arranged for the top-secret shipment of tons of chemical and biological armaments, including anthrax and bubonic plague, to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, hoping to reverse his looming defeat by Iran’s million-man army. Ayatollah Khomeini’s victorious Iranian forces were then routing Saddam in their war over the Persian Gulf. The Bush administration feared

A lawsuit, if allowed to proceed, would give the family, as well as homicide detectives in New York, a tool they could use to force disclosure of deep secrets. President Ford’s chief of staff, Donald Rumsfeld, and his deputy Dick Cheney, recognized the danger. Cheney warned Rumsfeld in a memo that a lawsuit might force the CIA “to disclose highly classified national security information.” To head off this looming disaster, he recommended that Ford make a public “expression of regret” and “express a willingness to meet personally with Mrs. Olson and her children.

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.

Aubrey Davis, officer, Protective Service Unit, Defense Protective Service, Pentagon: The secretary came out the door and asked what was going on. I told him we were getting a report that an aircraft had hit the Mall side of the building. He looked at me and immediately went toward the Mall. I said, “Sir, do you understand, that’s the area of impact, the Mall.” He kept going, so I told Officer [Gilbert] Oldach to come on. I saw Mr. Kisling, Joe Wassel, and Kevin Brown sitting in the personnel security office, and I waved for them to come with us. Donald Rumsfeld: I went out to see what was amiss.

You might have a sense of déjà vu about those first two types of dark data. In a famous news briefing, former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld nicely characterized them in a punchy sound bite, saying “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.”6 Rumsfeld attracted considerable media ridicule for that convoluted statement, but the criticism was unfair. What he said made very good sense and was certainly true.

Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see. —Arthur Schopenhauer

If I were God, or the sultan, or just the chief justice, this prescription for change would look very different from what I propose here. Citizens United would be overturned. Voting rights protections would be restored. Partisan gerrymandering would be legislated and litigated into oblivion. The Electoral College might be dissolved. But to paraphrase former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, you don't wage de-devolution with the power you wish for; you wage it with the power you have. As a matter of both political reality and human mortality, the Supreme Court is out of reach for a generation. To protect democracy, we must otherwise intervene. This manifesto, therefore, is a platform for change built of six wholly unrelated planks--economic, regulatory, militant, educational, inspirational, harmonious--to counter the forces of ruinous fragmentation. . . .

Donald Rumsfeld, but at a press conference in 2002, he expressed a philosophical thought with exceptional clarity when he offered this observation: There are things we know (“known facts”), there are things we do not know (“known unknowns”), and there are things we do not know that we do not know (“unknown unknowns”).

Late that year, one of the soldiers stationed at the prison [Abu Ghraib] reported the abuses to his superiors and said that photos had been taken by the abusers. The commanders in Iraq immediately took action and took steps to launch an investigation. Soon after that the news reached Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and General Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who told President Bush in early January 2004 that incidents at Abu Ghraib were being looked into. It seems nobody told these senior leaders that these incidents were truly horrendous.

A former secretary of defense had once talked about how there were known knowns—the things we know that we know, like the sky is blue and the sun rises in the east. Then there were known unknowns, like what is the cure for cancer? But there were also unknown unknowns, and these were the most dangerous: things we don’t know we don’t know. The things that came out of the blue. The things you didn’t even know you had to prepare for.

-to shock the American Public so badly that all other domestic issues going on will seem negligible in comparison, such as the day before 9/11 when Donald Rumsfeld was on TV talking about how $2.3 trillion couldn’t be accounted for at the Pentagon. The money was missing. I bet you never heard about that after the tidal wave of 9/11 washed over the media. -to excuse injecting our military

I wrote a memo for the President, noting that McGovern’s “warmth, concern, and decency are appealing.” I suggested that the administration seek opportunities to highlight Nixon’s interest in the problems of ordinary Americans. I believed Nixon did care about improving people’s quality of life but that he just preferred to view and discuss things in theoretical, rather than personal,

ALAN TAYLOR (Director) I wasn't going to mention that because I got in trouble the last time I mentioned it. We didn't have enough heads. We had to use every head we had. [Bush's head] had been made for some comedy. Se we had to use it. I remember making some not-very-brilliant joke at the time, like, "You go to production with the heads you have, not the heads you want"--paraphrasing [Bush's secretary of defense] Donald Rumsfeld--because I was pretty angry at Bush and Rumsfeld at the time. I thought it was funny. Since then I've realized if someone made a joke like that about a president I believed in, I would have been offended too. I think I've probably mellowed a bit, though if you gave me the chance to use [Trump's] head I'd probably jump at it.

A similar approach is helpful when considering hiring someone. I try to look at their résumé and background and ask: Where might they want their career to be heading, and how might that coincide with our needs? What kinds of incentives would encourage them to do their best? I try to consider their interests, concerns, and perspectives just as I consider ours. Taking a few moments to think about the hopes and aspirations of others—trying to put yourself in their shoes—is well worth the time and effort.

There are things we know we know. . . . 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. —Donald Rumsfeld

Since Parcells joined the NFL in 1980, his off-season workload has multiplied. Downtime eventually almost disappeared thanks to the Senior Bowl, the combine, free agency, the draft, minicamps, and training camp. Coaches also needed to factor in time to deal with unpredictable developments, or as Donald Rumsfeld, the former secretary of defense, might call them, known unknowns. Before the twilight of his NFL career, Parcells has especially relished his off-season football activities. But now at sixty-five, he had little appetite to prepare another team, especially given the chance of ultimately being undermined by a player flubbing a routine task in a game's pivotal moment. 'That was what got me,' he says, 'because now it's another year; we've got to go through a whole new cycle, when we were right there. We had a chance to win it and go to Chicago and beat the Bears. They weren't that good.