JFYI, the "Unknown Unknowns" quote is from before the invasion (2002-02-12). It was deflection on whether there was evidence of Iraq building WMDs or of cooperating with e.g Al Qaeda.
> Q: Could I follow up, Mr. Secretary, on what you just said, please? In regard to Iraq weapons of mass destruction and terrorists, is there any evidence to indicate that Iraq has attempted to or is willing to supply terrorists with weapons of mass destruction? Because there are reports that there is no evidence of a direct link between Baghdad and some of these terrorist organizations.
> Rumsfeld: 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.
> And so people who have the omniscience that they can say with high certainty that something has not happened or is not being tried, have capabilities that are ...
I haven't read the transcript of this conversation in a long time, but thank you for sharing it.
The sophistry of his argument is extreme.
Yes, of course there are always "unknown unknowns"-- but the statement "there is no evidence that Iraq is supplying WMDs to terrorists" is not a statement made in a vacuum, in which all permutations of known/unknown are equally likely.
It really is jarring that this is about the actual justification for a war, and his response basically boils down to "well we don't know they haven't done it or if they might in the future".
> Q: Could I follow up, Mr. Secretary, on what you just said, please? In regard to Iraq weapons of mass destruction and terrorists, is there any evidence to indicate that Iraq has attempted to or is willing to supply terrorists with weapons of mass destruction? Because there are reports that there is no evidence of a direct link between Baghdad and some of these terrorist organizations.
> Rumsfeld: 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.
> And so people who have the omniscience that they can say with high certainty that something has not happened or is not being tried, have capabilities that are ...
https://archive.ph/20180320091111/http://archive.defense.gov...