Donald Rumsfeld’s Real Rules

Former Secretary of Defense and renowned poet Donald Rumsfeld has decided that America is in dire need of his wisdom. Later this year, he’ll release Rumsfeld’s Rules, a book that collects his sage advice, offering “a candid take on success, failure, crises and moving up in business and government.”

Rummy famously said, “If you are not criticized, you may not be doing much.”

Or you may have invaded the wrong country resulting in the deaths of 4,000 U.S. soldiers and as many as 100,000 civilians while letting Osama bin Laden escape.

To save you a few bucks, here are few classic Rumsfeldian pearls of wisdom you should know by heart:

“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.” February 12, 2002

“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.” November 14, 2002

“As you know, you go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.” December 9, 2004

“I don’t believe anyone that I know in the administration ever said that Iraq had nuclear weapons.” May 14, 2003

“Oh, Lord. I didn’t mean to say anything quotable.” September 7, 2001