Unknown Knowns

Slate has compiled a 'tongue-in-cheek' collection of Rumsfeld's poems that I find amusing. The poems are the exact words of the former defense secretary, as taken from the official transcripts on the Defense Department Web site. The poems are quite funny, my favorite is The Unknown.


The Unknown
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.

—Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing


I think Rumy's big problem was that he didn't recognize that there were also unknown knowns, things that we don't think we know that we actually do know. Like whether Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.