docwebster ([personal profile] docwebster) wrote2004-02-25 12:40 pm

HUH?

An Americas.org Q & A on Haiti, includes Defense Secretary Rumsfeld's clarification of the U.S. position: "We have no plans to do anything. By that, I don't mean we have no plans. Obviously, we have plans to do everything in the world that we can think of. But we -- there's no intention at the present time, or no reason to believe, that any of the thinking that goes into these things year in and year out would have to be utilized."

Everybody got that? *blink*

[identity profile] allah-sulu.livejournal.com 2004-02-25 07:20 pm (UTC)(link)
It means that the military has contingency plans for everything -- there's probably not a country in the world that we don't have plans and studies for somewhere. The idea is that when a problem does come up, it's too late to start from scratch making plans and studies for what to do. So, it would not have been honest to say that we have "no plans" to invade Haiti -- we probably have a few different plans and options in a filing cabinet somewhere in the Pentagon. But we aren't actually planning to use those plans...

Did that help? I understand some militarese.