October 2, 2012

Donald Rumsfeld Inadvertently Disses Himself Yet Again

Donald Rumsfeld has weighed in on the Obama administration’s at-best-muddled response to the Benghazi embassy attack:

I thought it was amazing that someone in [UN ambassador Susan Rice’s] position would go on with that degree of certainty, that fast and that authoritatively and be that wrong…[I]t demonstrated such serious misjudgments…

You remember Donald Rumsfeld. He was 13th and 21st United States Secretary of Defense, first under Gerald Ford and then George W. Bush. His hobbies include playing squash and roping cattle. He was also instrumental in the judgment and degrees of certainty that led to this:

this /thisOh, right. That. Staff Sgt. Sean A. Foley/US ArmyAnd he gave the world this slice of poetry when asked in 2002 about WMD-related intelligence gaps:

[T]here 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.

Also, he’s wanted for war crimes.

So in other words, yes, Donald Rumsfeld is absolutely the guy you would want to comment on being “wrong” with regards to foreign intel.

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In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

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