arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)

Having said that, I will read you a few poems.

Hart Seely has compiled comments the US secretary of Defense made at various press briefings of the US Department of Defense in a book called ‘Pieces of Intelligence, the existential poetry of Donald Rumsfeld’.
Here are a few examples :

A Confession (May 16, 2001)

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.

The Situation (October 12, 2001)

Things will not be necessarily continuous.
The fact that they are something other than perfectly continuous
Ought not to be characterized as a pause.
There will be some things that people will see.
There will be some things that people won't see.
And life goes on.

The Unknown (February 12, 2002)

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.

Happenings (February 28, 2003)

You're going to be told lots of things.
You get told things every day that don't happen.

It doesn't seem to bother people, they don't—
It's printed in the press.
The world thinks all these things happen.
They never happened.

Everyone's so eager to get the story
Before in fact the story's there
That the world is constantly being fed
Things that haven't happened.

All I can tell you is,
It hasn't happened.
It's going to happen.

Clarity (February 28, 2003)

I think what you'll find,
I think what you'll find is,
Whatever it is we do substantively,
There will be near-perfect clarity
As to what it is.

And it will be known,
And it will be known to the Congress,
And it will be known to you,
Probably before we decide it,
But it will be known.

Henny Penny (April 11, 2003)

I picked up a newspaper today
and I couldn't believe it.
I read eight headlines that talked about
chaos, violence, unrest.

And it just was Henny Penny –
"The sky is falling."
I've never seen anything like it!

And here is a country that's being liberated,
here are people who are going
from being repressed
and held under the thumb
of a vicious dictator,
and they're free.

And all this newspaper could do,
with eight or 10 headlines,
they showed a man bleeding,
a civilian,
who they claimed we had shot –
one thing after another.

It's just unbelievable how people can
take that away from what is happening in that country!

Q: Mr. Secretary, could I follow that up?

Sure!
(Laughter.)
I think it deserves a follow- up!
(More laughter.)
Let's go get that newspaper!
(Laughter.)


Inside And Outside The Tent (April 16, 2003)

What’s going to happen is,
as that happens,
they’ll have meetings.
And if you do something,
somebody’s not going to like it.

That’s certain in life.

It’s also true,
if you don’t do something,
somebody’s not going to like it.
But the fact is,
if you do do something
somebody’s not going to like it,
and that’s what happening.

So someone will come up and say something,
and something else,
as happens in democracies, in free systems,
somebody’s going to say,
“I don’t agree with that.”
And they’ll either say it from inside the tent
or outside the tent.