What is the fuss about?

December 9, 2003 in Old Blog Posts by Mentalacrobatics | 1 comment

What is all the fuss about? Rumsfeld’s now infamous “known unknowns and unknown unknowns” speech :

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.

makes perfect sense. Mark Steyn agrees. I do not think it deserved the Golden Bull Award presented annually by the Plain English Campaign for the year’s worst example of gobbledygook. In fact the only thing you can give Rumsfeld credit for is that he does not mince his words. He says it as he thinks it is regardless of the consequences. Not a very clever tactic for a politician and maybe more than a little arrogant but brutally honest none the less.