‘Unknown knowns’ of Iraq hit uneasy Rumsfeld

American comedian Stephen Colbert mocks former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld by adding a new category to his famous phrase uttered as a means to justify the United States invasion of Iraq over weapons of mass destruction.

Rumsfeld, who is appearing on US media recently to promote his new app called Churchill Solitaire, appeared awkward for moments during the Monday evening’s episode of The Late Show.

Rumsfeld offered various reasons for the invasion, including the use of chemical weapons by the regime of former dictator Saddam Hussein against neighboring Iran.

In response to a question, “Do you still feel it was the right thing to do?”, the former defense secretary said, “I think when the president made the decision, the Iraqi government had opposed something like 15, or 16 UN resolutions; they were repressive; they had used chemical weapons on their neighbor, the Iranians.”

Colbert asserted that he was not so cynical about the US government to think that the authorities actually knew there were no WMDs in Iraq but kept it silent.

Instead, he asked if there was the possibility that Rumsfeld and some of his colleagues knew their evidence was not solid and made people think it is, mocking a famous statement the former defense secretary had made in favor of launching the war.

At a news briefing on February 12, 2002 about the lack of evidence, Rumsfeld said, “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. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones.”

“That leads me to your famous saying,” Colbert said after talking for a while, recounting the quotation, which he referred to as Rumsfeld’s “baby,” and then adding a new category that was followed by the audience’s laughter.

“There is a fourth option that no one ever talks about, which is the unknown knowns, which is the things that we know and then we choose not to know or not let other people know we know,” said the famous television host.

“So there was an unknown known for the American people; it was known that there was no hard evidence but we were presented a partial picture.”

Earlier in the show, Rumsfeld avoided to shoulder responsibility for the current situation in Iraq and Syria, where Daesh Takfiris are wreaking havoc, by reducing the conflict to one between Shias and Sunnis.

“I think the disorder in the entire region and the conflict between the Sunnis and the Shia is something that generally people had not anticipated.”

In March 2003, the US invaded Iraq in blatant violation of international law, over Iraq's weapons of mass destruction but no such weapons were ever discovered in the country.

The US-led military invasion plunged Iraq into chaos, resulting in years of deadly violence and the rise of terrorist groups like al-Qaeda in Iraq, which was a precursor of Daesh (ISIL).

At the end of the show, Colbert introduced Churchill Solitaire to the viewers.

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