Stephen Colbert delicately provoked a discussion about the limited information made available to the American public in the lead-up to the Iraq War during Donald Rumsfeld’s Monday night appearance on “The Late Show.”
Colbert twisted the former defense secretary’s infamous knowns-and-unknowns statement to ask if the U.S. government manipulated a fourth category of knowledge, which he dubbed an “unknown known,” by neglecting to state publicly that their intelligence about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction was not 100 percent sound.
“The president had available to him intelligence from all elements of the government,” Rumsfeld replied. “And the National Security Council members had that information. It was all shared. It was all supplied. And it’s never certain. If it were a fact, it wouldn’t be called intelligence.”
“Wow,” a surprised-looking Colbert responded. “I think you answered my question.”
The 83-year-old Rumsfeld was visiting the show to promote his new “Churchill Solitaire” app, but Colbert steered the conversation to the Iraq War for close to ten minutes.
Watch the interview segment below:
Rumsfeld 2016: “What’s important is the intentions of people…”
Rice 2002: “The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly Saddam can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”
Mr, Rumsfeld, how would you classify Ms. Rice’s intentions?
Rumsfeld is still so damned smug. He should be begging forgiveness from the american people and the millions of people in Irag and throughout the middle east who are living the fallout of his arrogant stupidity. He deserves to be spending the remainder of his life in disgrace and in jail instead of regurgitating his on-going bullshit on national TV.
the first thought that comes to me is “war criminal”.
Rummy, Cheney et. al cherry-picked the intel to get C+ Augustus to start a war.
… i’ll take “fear-mongering” for $1000, Alex…
If only news interviewers and pundits were half as smart as Stephen…