"There are known knowns; there are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns...."

[marmar]

WikiLeaks Snapshot: A Week in War
CBS News Compares Official Iraq War Reports From Nov. 27-Dec. 3, 2005 to WikiLeaks Documents From Same Period

(CBS) By Laura Strickler and Catherine Cannon


While Americans were wrapping up their Thanksgiving weekend and turning towards holiday shopping in 2005, the war raged on in Iraq.

Through official reports, the Pentagon announced the deaths of 22 soldiers serving in Iraq during the week of Sunday, November 27, 2005 through Saturday December 3, 2005.

On Sunday the Pentagon announced the death of Sgt. Gregory Hull, a twenty-year-old from Pocahontas, Iowa, who died from an improvised explosive device (IED) in Al-Anbar Province. On Wednesday, the Pentagon said 20-year-old Corporal Joshua Snyder from Hampstead, Md., died from small-arms fire in Fallujah.

And on Thursday, ten Marines died all at once. The men were at an abandoned flour factory they were using as a patrol base outside of Fallujah when an IED exploded. The Pentagon reported the men ranged from age 19 to 29.

There were no other official Pentagon press releases of violent events in Iraq that week.

But a look at the 1,202 secret documents released by WikiLeaks from the same week paints a picture of the grisly environment faced by U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians where death was routine. ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/10/23/world/main6985472.shtml

[Celtic Raven]

1. K&R nt

[ensho]

2. Rummy - crazy, cruel, criminal that should be in prison

nt

[EFerrari]

3. Have you really heard the poetry of Donald Rumsfeld?

http://stuffedpenguin.com/rumsfeld/lyrics.htm

[ensho]

4. thanks for link

nt

[Recursion]

5. That sad bit is that "known knowns" speech was a pretty good point

It was just a stupid way to say it, but his point was "we don't actually know how much support the insurgency gets across various populations so it's very difficult to predict whether our current strategy will work and if so when."

[petronius]

6. Right - it was clumsily constructed, but for someone in the the Bush Admin to actually

recognize that there were gaps in their awareness was pretty surprising. Too bad they kept acting as if they could create their own reality...

There were/are a lot of reasons to criticize Rumsfeld, but that speech really isn't one of them.

[lunatica]

7. Meantime we make it up as we go because we want these wars

The real point was that he said that because he's a warmongering criminal against humanity making excuses for killing innocent people.

Great point that. :sarcasm: