• Complain

Donald Rumsfeld - Known and Unknown: A Memoir

Here you can read online Donald Rumsfeld - Known and Unknown: A Memoir full text of the book (entire story) in english for free. Download pdf and epub, get meaning, cover and reviews about this ebook. year: 2011, publisher: Sentinel, genre: Politics. Description of the work, (preface) as well as reviews are available. Best literature library LitArk.com created for fans of good reading and offers a wide selection of genres:

Romance novel Science fiction Adventure Detective Science History Home and family Prose Art Politics Computer Non-fiction Religion Business Children Humor

Choose a favorite category and find really read worthwhile books. Enjoy immersion in the world of imagination, feel the emotions of the characters or learn something new for yourself, make an fascinating discovery.

Donald Rumsfeld Known and Unknown: A Memoir
  • Book:
    Known and Unknown: A Memoir
  • Author:
  • Publisher:
    Sentinel
  • Genre:
  • Year:
    2011
  • Rating:
    4 / 5
  • Favourites:
    Add to favourites
  • Your mark:
    • 80
    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5

Known and Unknown: A Memoir: summary, description and annotation

We offer to read an annotation, description, summary or preface (depends on what the author of the book "Known and Unknown: A Memoir" wrote himself). If you haven't found the necessary information about the book — write in the comments, we will try to find it.

Donald Rumsfeld: author's other books


Who wrote Known and Unknown: A Memoir? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.

Known and Unknown: A Memoir — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "Known and Unknown: A Memoir" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make
Known and Unknown

Known and Unknown A Memoir - image 1

Donald Rumsfeld
Known and Unknown

A MEMOIR

SENTINEL

SENTINEL

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephens Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi110 017, India

Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:
80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

First published in 2011 by Sentinel,
a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

Copyright Donald Rumsfeld, 2011

All rights reserved

Credits for photographs in the inserts appear on .

Map illustrations by Jeffrey L. Ward

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Rumsfeld, Donald, 1932

Known and unknown: a memoir / Donald Rumsfeld.
p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN: 978-1-101-50249-5

1. Rumsfeld, Donald, 1932- 2. Cabinet officersUnited StatesBiography. 3. United States. Dept. of DefenseOfficial and employeesBiography. 4. United StatesPolitics and government19451989. 5. United StatesPolitics and government19896. War on Terrorism, 2001-2009. 7. Iraq War, 2003- I. Title.

E840.8.R84A3 2011

352.293092dc22

[B]

2010042050

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrightable materials. Your support of the authors rights is appreciated.

Penguin is committed to publishing works of quality and integrity. In that spirit, we are proud to offer this book to our readers; however, the story, the experiences, and the words are the authors alone.

To Joyce

What one needs in life are the pessimism of intelligence and the optimism of will.

former Belgian ambassador to NATO and dean of the North Atlantic Council, Andr de Staercke, as quoted in Rumsfelds Rules

Contents

PART I
Lessons in Terror

PART II
An American, Chicago Born

PART III
The U.S. Congress: From Camelot to Quagmire

PART IV
In Nixons Arena

PART V
Javelin Catcher: Inside the Ford White House

PART VI
Fighting the Cold War

PART VII
Back to Reality

PART VIII
Leaning Forward

PART IX
Into the Graveyard of Empires

PART X
Saddams Miscalculation

PART XI
The Occupation of Iraq

PART XII
Wartime Detention

PART XIII
Pulling On Our Boots: Challenges and Controversies Beyond the War Zones

PART XIV
The Long, Hard Slog

Authors Note

A n internet search of known unknown in the autumn of 2010 resulted in more than three hundred thousand entries, a quarter million of which were linked to my name. There is an entry on Wikipedia. The reference has been turned into poetry. That poetry has been set to music. And that was just on the first page of the search results.

Yet for a phrase seemingly so well known, there is some irony in the fact that its origins and meaning remain largely unknown.

The phrase first became publicly linked to me in early 2002. Toward the end of one of my Pentagon press briefings, a journalist told me that reports were suggesting the absence of a link between Saddam Husseins regime and terrorists seeking weapons of mass destruction. These unidentified reports, the questioner suggested, were evidence of a lack of a direct link.

Putting aside the substance of the reporters questionat least for the momentI raised a larger point about the limits of human knowledge. I responded:

Reports that say something hasnt 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 know] we do not know. But there are also unknown unknownsthe ones we dont know we dont know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tends to be the difficult one.

At first glance, the logic may seem obscure. But behind the enigmatic language is a simple truth about knowledge: There are many things of which we are completely unawarein fact, there are things of which we are so unaware, we dont even know we are unaware of them.

Known knowns are facts, rules, and laws that we know with certainty. We know, for example, that gravity is what makes an object fall to the ground.

Known unknowns are gaps in our knowledge, but they are gaps that we know exist. We know, for example, that we dont know the exact extent of Irans nuclear weapons program. If we ask the right questions we can potentially fill this gap in our knowledge, eventually making it a known known.

The category of unknown unknowns is the most difficult to grasp. They are gaps in our knowledge, but gaps that we dont know exist. Genuine surprises tend to arise out of this category. Nineteen hijackers using commercial airliners as guided missiles to incinerate three thousand men, women, and children was perhaps the most horrific single unknown unknown America has experienced.

I first heard a variant of the phrase known unknowns in a discussion with former NASA administrator William R. Graham, when we served together on the Ballistic Missile Threat Commission in the late 1990s. Members of our bipartisan commission were concerned that some briefers from the U.S. intelligence community treated the fact that they lacked information about a possible activity to infer that the activity had not happened and would not. In other words, if something could not be proven to be true, then it could be assumed not to be true. This led to misjudgments about the ballistic missile capabilities of other nations, which in some cases proved to be more advanced than previously thought.

The idea of known and unknown unknowns recognizes that the information those in positions of responsibility in government, as well as in other human endeavors, have at their disposal is almost always incomplete. It emphasizes the importance of intellectual humility, a valuable attribute in decision making and in formulating strategy. It is difficult to acceptto knowthat there may be important unknowns. The best strategists try to imagine and consider the possible, even if it seems unlikely. They are then more likely to be prepared and agile enough to adjust course if and when new and surprising information requires itwhen things that were previously unknown become known.

I also encountered this concept in Thomas Schellings foreword to Roberta Wohlstetters book Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision, in which Schelling identified a poverty of expectations as the primary explanation for Americas inability to anticipate and thwart the Japanese attack on Hawaii. This has been interpreted to mean that the beginning of wisdom is the realization of how little one truly knows.

Next page
Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «Known and Unknown: A Memoir»

Look at similar books to Known and Unknown: A Memoir. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.


Reviews about «Known and Unknown: A Memoir»

Discussion, reviews of the book Known and Unknown: A Memoir and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.