.
The Pentagon is about to be hit by change at the top. Robert Gates, long-suffering Defence Secretary, is desperate at the age of 67 to retire after serving eight presidents during his 40-year career. He has a fancy lakeside house in Washington State and is heading off on June 30. At least some people know when to retire!! He is being replaced by a man six years older than him, Leon Panetta, CIA Director. It's a great swap, a former CIA Director (Gates) handing over to the present CIA Director.
I have it on good authority that the following conversation took place between Gates and Panetta the other day. The dialogue is based around the famous quotation from their predecessor at the Pentagon, Donald Rumsfeld, who, you may recall, once said at a press conference: "Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me because, as you 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."
Thank you, Mr Rumsfeld, for this gem, always worth repeating. Anyway, here are Mr Gates and Mr Panetta facing each other at the Pentagon, two weeks before Mr Gates is out of here and yippee to the house in Washington and Mr Panetta is why on earth did I say yes to the President, now I'm stuck with this dreadful place for the next two or three years.
"So Leon, what do you want to know?" asks Bob Gates.
"I already know what you know," Leon replies smugly.
"Yeah, but you don't know what only I know."
"Bob, I'm the Director of the CIA, I know everything you think you know and probably what you don't know."
"You can't know what I don't know because even I don't know what I don't know although I've got a pretty good idea."
"Ok, I don't know what you think you don't know but I do know what I know you don't know."
"So how can I help?"
"Hm, how the hell am I going to cut $400 billion from the Pentagon budget over the next 12 years, as the President is demanding?"
"I don't know."
"And how are we going to get out of Afghanistan by 2014 and declare a victory?"
"Haven't a clue."
"And is there any point in Nato?"
"***** Nato."
"Well thanks, Bob, that was very useful."
"My pleasure. Anything else you want to know?"
Leon shakes his head and the two men shake hands. Being Defence Secretary of the only superpower on the planet is tough.
Something entirely different. Musical events in Old Town Alexandria. The world's worst musicians perform every weekend on the streets of Old Town and I am close to a plan to eliminate the lot. My top victims are: the saxophonist who stands on the corner of Royal Street where I live and King St, the main street, with a bucket in front of him and plays two tunes, only two tunes. I will NEVER give him a cent. The harpist, a strange Romanian gypsy woman who sits on a rock overlooking the Potomac River, plucking at a harp and singing so quietly I feel like saying, "SING UP, LADY", but I don't because she's total rubbish. Her plucking fingers bear absolutely no relation to the unlyrical vocal meanderings claimed to be a song, it's like someone singing God Save the Queen while the band is playing Moon River. The old boy who sits on the steps of a shopping courtyard and strums at the guitar. I say strums but actually he feathers the strings so that to hear it you need to place your earhole one centimetre from the instrument, and apparently he sings as well but whatever sound is coming from his throat makes my gypsy harpist sound like Mick Jagger at his most raucous. The drummer, well forget drums and forget drumming, he sits all day on the pavement with two empty buckets in front of him and just hits them with a sort of drumstick. It's unbearably awful, lacking any sort of rythm. There's also a guitarist who stands up outside a restaurant. But he CAN'T play the guitar. He has never learned how it works. He might as well sit on a bucket and blow a whistle. I'm going to tell him that next time I walk by. Anyway, secret plans to eliminate the lot.
On the other hand, I've discovered a restaurant where upstairs after 9pm on Fridays and Saturdays, a bunch of guys and girls get round a piano played by a woman who looks 102 and wears a wig but is pretty damn good on the ivories, and the singers are cool too. When we arrived the other night, a bloke with a belly the size of the Grand Canyon was belting a number from one of the musicals, and later a guy who looked like a waiter with the longest nose I've ever seen sang a sexy number and sashayed around the room swaying his hips at all the girls. Great stuff. Proper music. Real entertainment. Eat your heart out gypsy woman.
