AN IMAGINARY TALK WITH DONALD RUMSFELD, IN HIS OWN WORDS

AN IMAGINARY TALK WITH DONALD RUMSFELD, IN HIS OWN WORDS

Interviewer: “Hello, Secretary Rumsfeld. Thank you for joining us this morning.”

Rumsfeld: “Well, golly, I’m just pleased as punch to be here.”

Interviewer: “Let’s get right to it, shall we Mr. Secretary. There are many Americans who think that Iraq has become a quagmire. What do you have to say about that criticism? Is Iraq a quagmire?”

Rumsfeld: “Now settle down, settle down. Hell, I’m an old man, it’s early in the morning and I’m gathering my thoughts here.”

Interviewer: “Is that your way of avoiding the question, Mr. Secretary?”

Rumsfeld: “I don’t do quagmires.”

Interviewer: “Does that mean that you don’t have an answer for your critics?”

Rumsfeld: “If I know the answer, I’ll tell you the answer, and, if I don’t, I’ll just respond cleverly.”

Interviewer: “Do you know the answer to the question?”

Rumsfeld: “I believe what I said yesterday.”

Interviewer: “Which was...what?”

Rumsfeld: “I don’t know what I said, but I know what I think, and, well, I assume it’s what I said.”

Interviewer: “But, what was it that you said yesterday?”

Rumsfeld: “A distinguished academician, I don’t have the exact quote so I won’t name him, said something to the effect that the situation in Iraq is terrible, and it’s never been better.”

Interviewer: “I’m a little confused, Mr. Secretary. You will have to excuse me, but are you saying that Iraq is or is not a quagmire?”

Rumsfeld: “Well, um, you know, something’s neither good nor bad but thinking makes it so, I suppose, as Shakespeare said.”

Interviewer: “’Shakespeare.’ Hmm. All right, Mr. Secretary, why don’t we move on? Why haven’t we found Osama bin Laden yet? Is it that we don’t know where he is, or has the administration lost interest in finding him?”

Rumsfeld: “We do know of certain knowledge that he is either in Afghanistan, or in some other country, or dead.”

Interviewer: “Can’t you be any more specific than that, Mr. Secretary?”

Rumsfeld: “I don’t do predictions. I’m not into this detail stuff. I’m more concepty.”

Interviewer: “So, bin Laden might be anywhere or he’s dead. Is that how you see it?”

Rumsfeld: “There’s another way to phrase that and that is that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. It is basically saying the same thing in a different way. Simply because you do not have evidence that something does not exist does not mean that you have evidence that it doesn’t exist.”

Interviewer: “I think I can see where you’re coming from. Well, then, let me ask you this question. Would you prefer to believe that bin Laden is, in fact, dead?”

Rumsfeld: “Death has a tendency to encourage a depressing view of war.”

Interviewer: “Mr. Secretary, are you depressed over the way the war is going for the army? Was it prepared for all of resistance it is now experiencing?”

Rumsfeld: “As you know, you go to war with the army you have, not the army you might or wish to have at a later time.”

Interviewer: “Can you say how long the army will remain in Iraq?”

Rumsfeld: “I can’t tell you if the use of force in Iraq will last five days, five weeks or five months, but it won’t last any longer than that.”

Interviewer: “Excuse me for pointing this out Mr. Secretary, but we’ve been in Iraq for thirty-three months now, not ‘five months.’”

Rumsfeld: “I don’t do numbers.”

Interviewer: “Mr. Secretary, with respect to the intelligence that led us into the war, would you now admit that it was flawed?”

Rumsfeld: “Oh my goodness gracious, what you can buy off the Internet in terms of overhead photography. A trained ape can know an awful lot of what is going on in this world, just by punching on his mouse, for a relatively modest cost.”

Interviewer: “Are you stating for the record that the use of satellite images provided the administration with the basic intelligence that led it to conclude that Saddam had WMD’s?”

Rumsfeld: “If I said yes, that would then suggest that that might be the only place where it might be done which would not be accurate, necessarily accurate. It might also not be inaccurate, but I’m disinclined to mislead anyone. The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”

Interviewer: “Well, thank you for that clarifying comment, Mr. Secretary. I think. If I might switch topics for a moment, I’d like to ask you if you believe President Bush knew about the Valerie Plame outing?”

Rumsfeld: “I don’t know what the facts are but somebody’s going to have 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.”

Interviewer: “I’m not sure I understood what you just said, Mr. Secretary.”

Rumsfeld: “Learn to say ‘I don’t know.’ If used when appropriate, it will be often.”

Interviewer: “Now, you have totally lost me. But let’s press on. There has been speculation that the administration was going to invade Syria, but the plans were put on hold because of the difficulties our troops are having in Iraq. Would you care to comment?”

Rumsfeld: “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.”

Interviewer: “I’ll have to think about that one, Mr. Secretary. Finally, some people are predicting that you are going to resign after the New Year. Would you care to comment about these predictions?”

Rumsfeld: “I would not say that the future is necessarily less predictable than the past. I think the past was not predictable when it started.”

Interviewer: “Well, Mr. Secretary, our time is up. Thank you for a most curious interview. If I may, I have one last question. When your public service is over, will you write a book about your experiences in government?

Rumsfeld: “I don’t do book reviews.”