Home › Authors › Donald Rumsfeld
Donald Rumsfeld Quotes
1932–2021 United States
Donald Rumsfeld (9 July 1932 – 29 June 2021) was the 21st United States Secretary of Defense, serving from 2001 to 2006, succeeded by Robert Gates. He also served as the 13th Defense Secretary in 1975–1977 under President Ford, and in other roles under various presidents.
United States Aviators Businesspeople Non-fiction authors Politicians Also known as: Donald H. Rumsfeld, Rumsfeld, Donald
Random Donald Rumsfeld quote
42 quotes
Congress, the press, and the bureaucracy too often focus on how much money or effort is spent, rather than whether the money or effort actually achieves the announced goal.
It is pretty clear that the coalition can win in Afghanistan and Iraq in one way or another, but it will be a long, hard slog.
This war [in Vietnam] has been marked by so many lies and evasions... that it is not right to have the war end with one last lie.
We know where they [Iraq's WMD] are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south, and north somewhat....
It's going to be hard. There will be rough times. But it's also the best part of life to be engaged in doing something worthwhile.
Bureaucracy to Battlefield Speech (2001)
And it is not knowable if force will be used, but if it is to be used, it is not knowable how long that conflict would last. It could last, you know, six days, six weeks. I doubt six months.
[ Osama bin Laden is] either alive and well or alive and not too well or not alive.
I didn't advocate invasion...I wasn't asked.
You and a few other critics are the only people I've heard use the phrase immediate threat. I didn't, the president didn't. And it's become kind of folklore that that's what's happened.
A new idea ignored may be the next threat overlooked. A person employed in a redundant task is one who could be countering terrorism or nuclear proliferation.
Bureaucracy to Battlefield Speech (2001)
I suppose the implication of that is the president and the vice president and myself and Colin Powell just fell off a turnip truck to take these jobs.
What we are seeing is not the war in Iraq. What we're seeing is slices of the war in Iraq.
Today we lack metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror. Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?
Well, so be it. Nothing's perfect in life, so you have an election that's not quite perfect. Is it better than not having an election? You bet.
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, and that's a good thing.
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 do not know we do not know.
According to some estimates, we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions. We cannot share information from floor to floor in this building because it's stored on dozens of technological systems that are inaccessible or incompatible.
Bureaucracy to Battlefield Speech (2001)
We do have a saying in America: if you're in a hole, stop digging ..... erm, I'm not sure I should have said that.
I shouldn't get into ... this is diplomacy, and I don't do diplomacy.
Some might ask, how in the world could the Secretary of Defense attack the Pentagon in front of its people? To them I reply, Today, I have no desire to attack the Pentagon; I want to liberate it. We need to save it from itself.
Bureaucracy to Battlefield Speech (2001)
Topics Donald Rumsfeld is quoted on
Works