Beautiful Molly Ivins died yesterday. She was just my age. Breast cancer got her, after a long struggle during which she got rid of it twice. But it was determined, and came back a third time, and took her away.
Rather than saying she was witty and sometimes wicked, I'll just refer you to her farewell to Donald Rumsfeld, which she wrote shortly after the midterm election last November:
"I'm rather going to miss Rumsfeld's Zen-like nuggets of wisdom, the most famous of which is probably about the known unknowns and the unknown unknowns:
'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.'
According to Newsweek, Air Force Secretary Jim Roche went to Rumsfeld early on and said, 'Don, you do realize that Iraq could be another Vietnam.'
Replied Rummy: 'Vietnam? You think you have to tell me about Vietnam? Of course it won't be Vietnam. We are going to go in, overthrow Saddam, get out. That's it.'
I don't know what happened to that excellent plan, but I would like to know who knew it was unknowable."
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