Donald Rumsfeld
Donald Rumsfeld (July 9, 1932 - present) is the United States Secretary of Defense.
Quotes by Rumsfeld
- "It’s a difficult thing today to be informed about our government even without all the secrecy." --Chicago Tribune, 13 April, 1966 [1]
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- " 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 " — February 12, 2002, from a Department of Defense news briefing and sometimes set satirically as a poem—awarded 2003 ‘Foot in Mouth’ prize by Plain English Campaign (although not everyone shares their view, see Mark Steyn's response).
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- "Those who follow orders to commit such crimes will be found and they will be punished. War crimes will be prosecuted. And it will be no excuse to say, 'I was just following orders.' Any official involved in such crimes will forfeit hope of amnesty or leniency with respect to past action." Donald Rumsfeld, Pentagon briefing, 2003-03-20 [2]
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- Question given to Rumsfeld: What is your message to those Iraqi government officials who now have control of these American prisoners?
Rumsfeld: That they treat those prisoners according to the Geneva Convention, just as we treat Iraqi prisoners according to the Geneva Convention. [3] March 23, 2003 interview
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- "We know where they [Iraq's WMD] are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south, and north somewhat." – March 30, 2003 in an interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC This Week.
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- "I can't say if the use of force would last five days or five weeks or five months, but it certainly isn't going to last any longer than that." - Speaking on National Public Radio, November 2002. [4]
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- "Once in a while, I'm standing here, doing something. And I think, 'What in the world am I doing here?' It's a big surprise." — May 16, 2001, interview with the New York Times.
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- "The absence of evidence is not necessarily the evidence of absence" [5]
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- "'I don't know. Isn't that clear? You don't understand English?' ... telling a German reporter he was unaware of a new White House Iraq policy group." USNews.com, October 20, 2003
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- "It will be a long, hard slog." referring to the ongoing War on Terrorism.
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- "Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not." — September 11, 2001 at the National Military Command Center (quoted in notes taken by aides, as reported on CBS News)
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- "And there is, I am certain, among the Iraqi people a respect for the care and the precision that went into the bombing campaign." defenselink.mil, April 9, 2003
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- "Congress, the press, and the bureaucracy too often focus on how much money or effort is spent, rather than whether the money or effort actually achieves the announced goal."
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- "There will be good moments, and there will be less good moments." — April 7, 2004, in reference to the 2004 spring uprising in Iraq
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- "Well, so be it. Nothing's perfect in life, so you have an election that's not quite perfect. Is it better than not having an election? You bet" — September 23, 2004, in regards to Iraq's upcoming elections, at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.
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- "You go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you might want or wish to have."
- [in response to Spc. Thomas Wilson question] Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles?
- Camp Buehring, Kuwait. Dec. 8 2004
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- "I don't know what the facts are but somebody's certainly going to sit down with him and find out what he knows that they may not know, and make sure he knows what they know that he may not know, and that's a good thing." - Talking to reporters about whether President Bush knows about equipment inadequacies in Iraq, Dec. 9 2004 as reported by Reuters
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- "We're so conditioned as a people to think that a military campaign has to be cruise missiles and television images of airplanes dropping bombs, and that's just false. This is a totally different war. We need a new vocabulary. We need to get rid of old think and start thinking about this thing the way it really is." -Rumsfeld, CBS' "Evening News," 10-9-01
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- " I believe what I said yesterday. I don't know what I said, but I know what I think... and I assume it's what I said."
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- "... it seems to me that it's up to all of us to try to tell the truth, to say what we know, to say what we don't know, and recognize that we're dealing with people that are perfectly willing to, to lie to the world to attempt to further their case and to the extent people lie of, ultimately they are caught lying and they lose their credibility and one would think it wouldn't take very for that to happen dealing with people like this" -Rumsfeld in the documentary "Control Room" (2004)
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- "Pieces of intelligence, scraps of intelligence... you run down leads and you run down leads, and you hope that sometimes it works."
Quotes about Rumsfeld
Henry Kissinger is reputed to have said, "[Rumsfeld] is the most ruthless man I have ever met… and I mean that as a compliment."[6]
External links
- the BBC/UK's Donald Rumsfeld "Library of Quotations".
- Other quotes from Slate.
- "That's Life"
- Rumsfeld's free-speaking verse
- Timeline of monthly quotes on the buildup of Iraqi security forces