No, it's how bizarrely philosophical of an answer that was with regards to WMDs, invasion strategy, etc. It's the same comical level of cop-out to avoid saying "I might be wrong" that also got us the famous Bush Jr. "Fool me twice--can't get fooled again" line. Lots of extemporaneous political speaking centers around avoiding certain types of phrasing, and setting yourself up to be caught dead to rights being wrong in the future is one of the big ones you get taught to avoid verbalizing.
Rumsfeld couldn't answer questions about WMDs, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. with any form of "but hey I might be wrong, we'll see", because the second he was actually wrong it'd be the only thing saturating airwaves for weeks. So, you do wordy philosophical mush-mouthing that says "well, it's not our fault we didn't know, remember how I talked about unknown unknowns?"
No, it's how bizarrely philosophical of an answer that was with regards to WMDs, invasion strategy, etc. It's the same comical level of cop-out to avoid saying "I might be wrong" that also got us the famous Bush Jr. "Fool me twice--can't get fooled again" line. Lots of extemporaneous political speaking centers around avoiding certain types of phrasing, and setting yourself up to be caught dead to rights being wrong in the future is one of the big ones you get taught to avoid verbalizing.
Rumsfeld couldn't answer questions about WMDs, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. with any form of "but hey I might be wrong, we'll see", because the second he was actually wrong it'd be the only thing saturating airwaves for weeks. So, you do wordy philosophical mush-mouthing that says "well, it's not our fault we didn't know, remember how I talked about unknown unknowns?"