Talk:Donald Rumsfeld

Soviet Union

recently came across the following quote from Rumsfeld, but i can't find the source - does anyone know where it's from? it's in The Power Of Nightmares, episode 1. didn't want to add it until it could be properly cited.

The Soviet Union has been busy. They’ve been busy in terms of their level of effort; they’ve been busy in terms of the actual weapons they ’ve been producing; they’ve been busy in terms of expanding production rates; they’ve been busy in terms of expanding their institutional capability to produce additional weapons at additional rates; they’ve been busy in terms of expanding their capability to increasingly improve the sophistication of those weapons. Year after year after year, they’ve been demonstrating that they have steadiness of purpose. They’re purposeful about what they’re doing. Now, your question is, what ought one to be doing about that?

seems significant, as it's hauntingly similar to some of the talk about Iraq prior to the invasion in 2003.

Reverted addition of footnote formatting

The existing formatting is not optimal, but it is better than moving a mass of links to a footnote section. Links to sources generally should be provided in interlinear form, and not as footnotes. Please see Wikiquote:Village_pump#Reflist. ~ Kalki 00:00, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Quote - Does anyone know where it's from?

I remember seeing this on TV live way back when, and it's all over the internet now, but I can't find a reliable reference to where/when he said it. If anyone knows how to reference it, Donald said with respect to the location of Osama: "He's either alive and in Afghanistan or somewhere else, or he's dead." 66.183.69.201 03:45, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Just a thought...

It seems like most of these quotations have been chosen to portray Donald Rumsfeld in a negative light. However distasteful an individual he may be, I have a hard time believing that these quotations are entirely representative of his memorable public statements.

-- The bolding appears extremely arbitrary at the very least.

Unsourced

• That just couldn't be any more wrong than spreading marmalade on a steaming pile of flapjacks.
  • Response to the suggestion that "your planning (or lack thereof) has created utter disaster zones in both those countries (Afghanistan and Iraq)".

• Here in the Bush Administration, we're all grown-up enough to not let little things like Ivy League rivalries get in the way of work.

• This war has been marked by so many lies and evasions that it is not right to have the war end with one last lie.
  • "Rumsfeld versus Rumsfeld" by James Mann, LA Times, 2006-05-03 (accessed 2006-05-05)
  • supposedly correcting Henry Kissinger's erroneously early claim that all Americans had left Vietnam, c. April 1975

• Some have argued that the nuclear threat from Saddam Hussein is not iminent, that he is 5-7 years away from having a nuclear weapon. I would not be so certain.
  • Face the Nation

• You may find people who will contend that patriotism is something to be a little bit embarrassed about or that honor is somewhat outdated as a notion and that concentrating on America's imperfection makes you a realist. Not so. That's the sign of a cynic. Being a cynic is easy. You can just sit back, heckle from the cheap seats, while others serve, storm beaches, build nations, meet their destinies. Idealists write history's stirring chapters; cynics read those chapters and seem not to understand. Choose to be an idealist. There have always been those who contend that what's wrong with the world is America. Don't believe it.