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.

GREAT JOURNALISM, SLOW FUNDRAISING

Our team has been on fire lately—publishing sweeping, one-of-a-kind investigations, ambitious, groundbreaking projects, and even releasing “the holy shit documentary of the year.” And that’s on top of protecting free and fair elections and standing up to bullies and BS when others in the media don’t.

Yet, we just came up pretty short on our first big fundraising campaign since Mother Jones and the Center for Investigative Reporting joined forces.

So, two things:

1) If you value the journalism we do but haven’t pitched in over the last few months, please consider doing so now—we urgently need a lot of help to make up for lost ground.

2) If you’re not ready to donate but you’re interested enough in our work to be reading this, please consider signing up for our free Mother Jones Daily newsletter to get to know us and our reporting better. Maybe once you do, you’ll see it’s something worth supporting.

payment methods

GREAT JOURNALISM, SLOW FUNDRAISING

Our team has been on fire lately—publishing sweeping, one-of-a-kind investigations, ambitious, groundbreaking projects, and even releasing “the holy shit documentary of the year.” And that’s on top of protecting free and fair elections and standing up to bullies and BS when others in the media don’t.

Yet, we just came up pretty short on our first big fundraising campaign since Mother Jones and the Center for Investigative Reporting joined forces.

So, two things:

1) If you value the journalism we do but haven’t pitched in over the last few months, please consider doing so now—we urgently need a lot of help to make up for lost ground.

2) If you’re not ready to donate but you’re interested enough in our work to be reading this, please consider signing up for our free Mother Jones Daily newsletter to get to know us and our reporting better. Maybe once you do, you’ll see it’s something worth supporting.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate