KEY POINTS:
WASHINGTON - Donald Rumsfeld, who resigned as US defence secretary on Wednesday, was known for colourful quotes during his long career in politics, including two stints as Pentagon chief. Here are some memorable ones.
- "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. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones,"
- February 12, 2002.
- "Stuff happens," Rumsfeld said on April 11, 2003, when asked about rampant lawlessness in Baghdad after US troops captured the capital. "It's untidy, and freedom's untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things."
- "You go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time," Rumsfeld on December 8, 2004 told a US soldier in Kuwait who asked him why US troops had to dig through local landfills for pieces of rusted scrap metal and glass to provide armour for their vehicles before driving into Iraq.
- "His regime has large, unaccounted for stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, including VX, sarin, mustard gas, anthrax, botulism and possibly smallpox. And he has an active programme to acquire and develop nuclear weapons," Rumsfeld said on January 20, 2003. Before the Iraq war, Rumsfeld often warned of President Saddam Hussein's arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. None of these were found.
- "We know where they are," Rumsfeld said on March 30, 2003 in the days after the Iraq invasion, when asked whether he found it curious US forces had not yet found weapons of mass destruction. "They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat."
- "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," Rumsfeld said on November 14, 2002, three months before the invasion.
- "Now, you're thinking of Europe as Germany and France. I don't. I think that's old Europe," Rumsfeld said on January 22, 2003.
- "It is easier to get into something than to get out of it," Rumsfeld wrote in his published list of truisms known as "Rumsfeld's Rules."
- REUTERS
