From June 7, 2002....
Now some of the unknowns are known....mainly that Rumsfeld is a loon, at best.
'Unknown unknowns' a big threat: Rumsfeld
BRUSSELS, June 6: US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld baffled NATO allies and journalists alike on Thursday by
saying the greatest threats to Western civilisation may lurk in "unknown unknowns".
Rumsfeld told a news conference in Brussels he had explained to allied defence ministers that even US intelligence
agencies often only saw the tip of the iceberg in looking at military threats from "terrorists and terrorist states".
"What you find is there are very important pieces of intelligence information that countries that spend a lot of money and a
lot of time with a lot of wonderful people trying to learn more about what's going on in the world did not know - some
significant event for two years after it happened...in some cases 12 and 13 and 14 years after it happened," he said.
Rumsfeld was defending Washington's view that the United States and its allies could not wait for "absolute proof" before
taking action against groups and states suspected of acquiring weapons of mass destruction.
"The message is that there are no knowns. There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns, that is to
say there are things we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns - things we do not know we
don't know. "So when we do the best we can and we pull all this information together, and we then say 'well, that's
basically what we see as the situation', that is really only the known knowns and the known unknowns. And each year we
discover a few more of those unknown unknowns," he said.
Acknowledging that his argument might sound like a riddle, Rumsfeld concluded with a flourish: "There is another way to
phrase that, and that is that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."
Rogue states: The US defense secretary said the United States and its allies must go on the offensive against "terror states"
and terrorists, warning that the threat of weapons of mass destruction is worse than imagined.
"Absolute proof cannot be a precondition for action," Rumsfeld said in talking points prepared for his meeting here with
NATO defense ministers, and made available to reporters traveling with the secretary.
Rumsfeld's call to action came as ministers discussed ways to make NATO forces capable of responding swiftly to
terrorists and weapons of mass destruction in far-flung crises. The heightened sense of urgency was shared by most
NATO ministers, senior US defense officials said.
Among Rumsfeld's points were that the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction was pervasive and that access to
those capabilities was "inevitable." Real situation worse than what facts show," was one of the talking points. "Repeatedly
thought 'X' was the case, only to discover we underestimated."
He noted that the consequences of an attack with weapons of mass destruction were catastrophic and there was little or no
warning or margin for error. Under those conditions, the initiative was with terrorists and terrorist-states, he said.-Reuters |
