Donald Rumsfeld Quotes
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Imagine, a September 11 with weapons of mass destruction. It's not 3,000. It's tens of thousands of innocent men, women and children.
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Extending on his earlier comments in a press conference at NATO Headquarters, Brussels, Belgium (6 June 2002)
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Your performance depends on your people. Select the best, train them and back them. When errors occur, give sharper guidance. If errors persist or if the fit feels wrong, help them move on. The country cannot afford amateur hour in the White House.
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Visit with your predecessors from previous Administrations. They know the ropes and can help you see around some corners. Try to make original mistakes, rather than needlessly repeating theirs.
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Learn to say 'I don't know.' If used when appropriate, it will be often.
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It's a difficult thing today to be informed about our government even without all the secrecy.
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Well, so be it. Nothing's perfect in life, so you have an election that's not quite perfect. Is it better than not having an election? You bet.
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Public servants are paid to serve the American people. Do it well.
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In the execution of Presidential decisions work to be true to his views, in fact and tone.
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Think ahead. Don't let day-to-day operations drive out planning.
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Let's hear it for the essential daily briefing, however hollow and empty it might be. We'll do it.
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Simply because you do not have evidence that something exists does not mean that you have evidence that it doesn't exist.
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If you are not criticized, you may not be doing much.
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I don't believe anyone that I know in the administration ever said that Iraq had nuclear weapons.
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Arguments of convenience lack integrity and inevitably trip you up.
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Don't blame the boss. He has enough problems.
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What we are seeing is not the war in Iraq. What we're seeing is slices of the war in Iraq.111213
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Work continuously to trim the White House staff from your first day to your last. All the pressures are to the contrary.
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The Secretary of Defense is not a super General or Admiral. His task is to exercise civilian control over the Department for the Commander-in-Chief and the country.
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Reduce the layers of management. They put distance between the top of an organization and the customers.
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When cutting staff at the Pentagon, don't eliminate the thin layer that assures civilian control.
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The natural state of man is to want to be free. To have opportunities. To have choices.
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Our task, your task... is to try to connect the dots before something happens. People say, 'Well, where's the smoking gun?' Well, we don't want to see a smoking gun from a weapon of mass destruction.
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If the staff lacks policy guidance against which to test decisions, their decisions will be random.