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Like the vast majority of the sane world I was delighted to see Rumsfeld fall on his political sword yesterday (ie: used as a deserved scapegoat by his equally creepy mates).

I didn’t realise, however, that he had a track record of speaking nonsense that rivals "dubya" himself..

Everyone’s aware of the “The Known Unknowns” bollocks (which is so inane it verges on genius) but here’s some more grade A nonsense..

On the hunt for WMDs: "We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat."
On looting in Baghdad: "Stuff happens. It's untidy, and freedom's untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things."

On his country's forces: "You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time."

On a speedy victory: "The Gulf war in the 1990s lasted five days on the ground. I can't tell you if the use of force in Iraq today would last five days, or five weeks, or five months. But it certainly isn't going to last any longer than that."

On Europe, in 2003: "Now, you're thinking of Europe as Germany and France. I don't. I think that's old Europe."

See also:

Its rare to see a real cnut get what's coming to him... Enjoy it while you can!!

Rummy has some great inane quotes in some of his speeches. I've seen a few clips and sometimes he's so amazed that he's come up with such utter tenuous tosh that there's usually a horrid knowing chuckle after.

Here's some random ones:

"I believe what I said yesterday. I don't know what I said, but I know what I think, and, well, I assume it's what I said."

"Needless to say, the President is correct. Whatever it was he said."

"Death has a tendency to encourage a depressing view of war."

"I would not say that the future is necessarily less predictable than the past. I think the past was not predictable when it started."

"We do know of certain knowledge that he [Osama Bin Laden] is either in Afghanistan, or in some other country, or dead."

"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."

"I don't do diplomacy."

"I don't do foreign policy."

and of course:

"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."

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