Rating: ****
Donald Rumsfeld is a master or rhetorical flourish, as the title of this new Errol Morris documentary, The Unknown Known alludes to. Talking point sleight of hand like “Unknown Unknown,” and “The absence of evidence isn’t the evidence of absence,” was one of the reasons that Rumsfeld was, at once, both one of the most beloved and most hated senior advisers during the perilous first years of the War on Terror. Naturally, the man himself is staggeringly more complex than this simple caricature implies, and Morris has decided to put the spotlight him, albeit rather uncomfortably, in his latest film.
Firstly, if one tunes in to The Unknown Known expecting a weepy apology for Rumsfeld’s role in marching U.S. soldiers into dual quagmires in the Afghanistan and Iraq, you’ll be profoundly disappointed. The closest Rumsfeld comes to emotional regret is near the end when he talks about visiting a soldier in Walter Reed and how the doctors told him he wouldn’t make it, only to re-visit the hospital weeks later to learn that the same soldier had, in fact, lived. Some will argue that Rumsfeld was shedding crocodile tears, but I’m not so sure. It’s probably the only moment in the film where the former Sec Def’s arrogant, almost smarmy, veneer is punctured thoroughly.
