Book review: 'Known and Unknown' by Donald Rumsfeld

The Los Angeles Times ^ | February 8, 2011 | Tim Rutten

[2ndDivisionVet]

Donald Rumsfeld has served as White House chief of staff and twice as secretary of Defense, the youngest and the oldest man ever to hold the post. He has been a trusted diplomatic envoy and successful private sector executive. Throughout it all — indeed, for most of his 78 years — he has borne with courage and almost preternatural fortitude the burden of always being the smartest guy in the room....

[2ndDivisionVet]

Someone here has pointed out to me that all the proceeds from this book go to military families.

[M-cubed]

Don't know that for a fact....But watching Rummy thru the years I'd bet you 100 to 1 (Don't bet more then u could afford to lose...lol..almost a Rummy quote)....

A True American Patriot....luv him...Did u see him twist andera Mitchells ..(aka Greenspans beard) in a knot in her recent interview with him?...classic Rummy..she was serving up softballs after he took her to task!

[DWar]

always being the smartest guy in the room....

Intellegence does not necessarily translate to wisdom.

I'll take a man with the courage to act, forcefully not incrementally and follow through forcefully, not politically, based on a solid moral philosophical foundation.

In other words... 'Shock & awe' was great but the "soft w/ flaw" afterwards doomed Iraq to failure. Like with Vietnam, when Americans leave, the insurgents will take over. We can only prevent it by overwhelming occupation and we haven't the political will for that.

[Reily]

The problem with the whole Bush Administration approach to the WOT & Iraq was it was “Shock and Lawyers” meaning Lawyers were always in the critical path of decision making.
Lawyers were even in the critical path in regard to targeting. Their only saving grace was they did eventually get to the trigger pulling stage. If it had been a Rat administration that would have rarely happened.

[Reo]

I'm currently reading the book and it's excellent. Reading this review, what probably drives the reviewer (and most of the other libs) nuts is the fact that Rummy has fully documented his memory and recollections with exhaustive footnotes and documents. They prove (a) he was right, and (b)he is the smartest guy in the room.

[ModelBreaker]

” The Defense secretary responded: “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. It is, of course, a logical fallacy to multiply categories beyond necessity, . . .”

I don’t see any multiplication of categories here. Rumsfeld was absolutely right. I would add another category to his—mostly practiced by politicians—known knowns to which we are willfully blind.