Donald Rumsfeld: Quotes about people

“And there is, I am certain, among the Iraqi people a respect for the care and the precision that went into the bombing campaign.”

Donald Rumsfeld

DoD News Briefing April 09, 2003 http://www.defenselink.mil/Transcripts/Transcript.aspx?TranscriptID=2339
2000s

People

“You and a few other critics are the only people I've heard use the phrase immediate threat. I didn't, the president didn't. And it's become kind of folklore that that's what's happened.”

Donald Rumsfeld

CBS Face the Nation (14 March 2004) http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2004/tr20040314-secdef0542.html; in response Thomas Friedman quoted his previous statement from a hearing before the House Armed Services Committee (10 September 2002) http://www.iraqwatch.org/government/US/HearingsPreparedstatements/hasc-091802.htm:
:: But no terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people and the stability of the world than the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
2000s

People

“…it seems to me that it's up to all of us to try to tell the truth, to say what we know, to say what we don't know, and recognize that we're dealing with people that are perfectly willing to, to lie to the world to attempt to further their case and to the extent people lie of, ultimately they are caught lying and they lose their credibility and one would think it wouldn't take very long for that to happen dealing with people like this.”

Donald Rumsfeld

From the 2004 documentary film Control Room
2000s

People , Truth , Lie , World

“We're so conditioned as a people to think that a military campaign has to be cruise missiles and television images of airplanes dropping bombs, and that's just false. This is a totally different war. We need a new vocabulary. We need to get rid of old think and start thinking about this thing the way it really is.”

Donald Rumsfeld

on CBS' Evening News, October 9, 2001 http://www.defenselink.mil/Transcripts/Transcript.aspx?TranscriptID=2051
2000s

War , People , Way , Thinking

“I picked up a newspaper today and I couldn't believe it. I read eight headlines that talked about chaos, violence, unrest. And it just was Henny Penny -- "The sky is falling." I've never seen anything like it! And here is a country that's being liberated, here are people who are going from being repressed and held under the thumb of a vicious dictator, and they're free. And all this newspaper could do, with eight or 10 headlines, they showed a man bleeding, a civilian, who they claimed we had shot —one thing after another.
From the very beginning, we were convinced that we would succeed, and that means that that regime would end. And we were convinced that as we went from the end of that regime to something other than that regime, there would be a period of transition. And, you cannot do everything instantaneously; it's never been done, everything instantaneously. We did, however, recognize that there was at least a chance of catastrophic success, if you will, to reverse the phrase, that you could in a given place or places have a victory that occurred well before reasonable people might have expected it, and that we needed to be ready for that; we needed to be ready with medicine, with food, with water. And, we have been.
Freedom's untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things. They're also free to live their lives and do wonderful things. And that's what's going to happen here.”

Donald Rumsfeld

DOD news briefing following the fall of Baghdad (11 April 2003) http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2003/tr20030411-secdef0090.html