I love Rummy....

Love him or hate him, you have to admire a man who tells you what he thinks. Rumsfeld has a well earned reputation for bluntness. Kinda like the current governor of New Jersey who said many politicians are evasive because they “want an out…” Here are some good examples of how Mr Rumsfeld got his reputation:

If you are not criticized, you may not be doing much.

If you try to please everybody, somebody's not going to like it.

In our system leadership is by consent, not command. To lead a President must persuade. Personal contacts and experiences help shape his thinking. They can be critical to his persuasiveness and thus to his leadership. PERSONAL COMMENT: I think our current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue hasn’t gotten that concept down.

In politics, every day is filled with numerous opportunities for serious error. Enjoy it.

Reduce the number of lawyers. They are like beavers - they get in the middle of the stream and dam it up. PERSONAL COMMENT: Those goes for much in life…why don’t we ever hear “The United States is only five percent of the world’s population but we produce seventy percent of the world’s lawyers and that is disproportionate…”

There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know.

With the press there is no "off the record."

Work continuously to trim the White House staff from your first day to your last. All the pressures are to the contrary.

I stand for 8-10 hours a day. Why is standing limited to four hours?

It recalls to mind the statement by Winston Churchill, something to the effect that: I have benefited greatly from criticism, and at no time have I suffered a lack thereof.

Oh, Lord. I didn't mean to say anything quotable (From an interview with Associated Press Friday, September 7, 2001)

Let's hear it for the essential daily briefing, however hollow and empty it might be. We'll do it. Weekly staff meeting anyone?

I suppose the implication of that is the president and the vice president and myself and Colin Powell just fell off a turnip truck to take these jobs.

Don't say "the White House wants." Buildings can't want. Love this one…kinda reminds me of something GEN Jones told the soon to be mayor of Chicago about using the president’s name for everything.

Now some more good ones from the man:

US President Barack Obama has a habit of apologizing for the United States and did nothing to earn his Nobel Peace Prize, former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Sunday.

Asked whether Obama had turned international favor back toward the United States after eight years of president George W. Bush's administration, Rumsfeld rejected the premise.

"No, and I don't think there's data that supports that," he said in an interview with CNN. "I think he has made a practice of trying to apologize for America. I personally am proud of America."

Rumsfeld said Obama was awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize "on hope" instead of his accomplishments, something Obama himself suggested at the time.

"Well, he had not accomplished a thing when he got the Nobel Prize. It was given to him on hope. Had to have been because there wasn't anything that he'd done. He'd been in office 15 minutes," Rumsfeld said...

Anyone with any intelligence knows the 2009 Nobel award was a joke worse than Arafat, Carter or Gore combined. I’m just glad to see a man being “honest and refreshing” in our public discourse. This is Rummy’s version of civility.