We hear enough about Bush's idiotic statements, but I think someone needs to deconstruct the intertext, subtext, meta-text, blah blah of Rumsfeld. I think there's a postmodern philosophical genius in there somewhere. The man speaks as if Foucault was his private tutor.

Samples:

"I would not say that the future is necessarily less predictable than the past. I think the past was not predictable when it started."

"We do know of certain knowledge that he [Osama Bin Laden] is either in Afghanistan, or in some other country, or dead."

"Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because 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."

"There's another way to phrase that and that is that the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence. It is basically saying the same thing in a different way. Simply because you do not have evidence that something does exist does not mean that you have evidence that it doesn't exist."

"If I said yes, that would then suggest that that might be the only place where it might be done which would not be accurate, necessarily accurate. It might also not be inaccurate, but I'm disinclined to mislead anyone."

I actually kind of like these two.

Those quotes made my head hurt.

I also like that instead of saying "deployment of troops," Rumsfeld says "force flows."

Of course President Clinton wasn't too far from postmodern rhetorical genius when he said during the Lewinsky scandal, "It depends on what your definition of 'is' is."

(Edited by etcetera at 10:48 pm on Mar. 1, 2004)

That's one of my all-time favorite quotes.

(Edited by jamiecarroll at 7:45 pm on Mar. 1, 2004)

I have never heard that one before....Clintons terms where some controversial ones(he did serve two terms right?)

Only one and a half, he was assinated in 1998 by Squeaky Fromme.

may I also ask what is the squeaky fromme.

I love history and politics, so this kind of bothers me that you're not being taught things like how long Presidents were in office, and ones who were victims of assination attempts, or at least a little something about Charles Manson.

It's a person

I still think that he (hereiam...) is not who he claims to be.

I'm pretty sure Token wouldn't be in on it if it actually wasn't one of her students.

I think that Token is in on it, though I do not think that she is necessarily posing as HIAA1. His jump in grammatical skills was far too extreme (comparatively speaking) for me to think that the original HIAA and HIAA1 are the same person.

Someone tried to turn him into a donkey?

What I am the same person I promise.

Good catch. Too lazy to edit.

Me too- they sort of almost make sense. At least more sense than my Metaphysics professor ever did in college. But the best Rummy quote is this one:

"I can't say whether 'axis of evil' pertains to an evil grouping of evil groups, or an axis of groups with evil as their axis, or a group of evils that provide an axis for other groups and other evils and for other evil groups. What I can tell you is that I am the axis of evil"

I was just being assinine myself... nothing against you... just struck me as funny. Now had it been an ovine or porcine attempt, that would've been a story!!!!

"Going to war without France is like going duck hunting without your accordion."

He is a clever man. The world is his for the taking.

Now that's funny. Did Rumsfeld really say that?

so what if i won't to act like a 14 yeer old kid sometimes im not herting you

Okay, just kidding. I promise I am not Hereiamagain or hia1. I asked the man in question why he changed his screenname, and he said he forgot his original password and just started again.

I did not notice any dramatic improvement in grammatical skills.

Truly beautiful...beautifully true...

"Things are more like they are now than they've ever been."
-Gerald Ford

Well I actually used punctuation unlike my beggining posts back in November.

Why must you always be mean to me

How do you make these...and why? I have been curious about this square thingy for quite some time.

It makes boxes when I hit "Enter" on my Mac. . See.

For some reason I can't see them in anyone else's posts.

Reason #962 while Rachel is the coolest 15 year old on the planet...

Ah, okay. I kept looking for the square key on my computer and feeling confused.

So you don't see the squares in others' posts? Strange.

I didnt realize that it actually did that, sometimes I just accidentaly hit enter.

i actually just threw that in there because i hate ending sentences with quotation marks. my family is trying to trade this puppy in for a windows. boooo.

token, i don't see them even in my post. when i'm typing my post i see them, and in the quote area i see that other people had typed them, but they disappear in actual posts. it is very strange.

i can't belive i just spent time explaining that.

 Just seeing if I could do it with my PC. Turns out I can 

Well then Rachel really isn't as cool... oh well...

psh. fine.

Was that with the obligatory teen eye roll? I'm trying to get the code down here.

 Me, too 

talk to the hand, peacefrog!

You go, girlfriend!

(for the record, rachel is not my actual girlfriend-- I'd hate for this to get back to my parole officer)

You must be on a mustard fume high...

wait wait wait

mustard...getting high...please explain in graphic detail how I go about doing this

Dude! You haven't huffed mustard!?!??! You are missing out.. the best is that chinese food stuff that has the initial burn, then the smooth finish. Grey Poupon isn't bad, just a little hoity-toity to be sniffing out of a sock... now French's is just plain old low class... you huffing french's you gots a problem baby.

Hmm...I'm skeptical, so I'll let Powder P do it and report back to me. In the meantime, I'll just stick with my whipped cream cans.

The newest Rummyism, courtesy of Face the Nation:

"Mm-hmm. It--my view of--of the situation was that he--he had--we--we believe, the best intelligence that we had and other countries had and that--that we believed and we still do not know--we will know."