25 October 2001
Transcript: Rumsfeld Interview with USA Today, October 24
(War on terrorism requires broad, sustained effort, he says) (7530)
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says success in the war on terrorism
requires "a sustained effort across a broad front that makes life so
difficult" for terrorists and those who harbor them "that they stop
... what they've been doing."
He said this means dealing not just with the problem in Afghanistan,
but "with the other 50 [terrorist] cells around the world -- drying up
their money, arresting people, interrogating people, gathering
intelligence, doing some overt military activities as well as some
covert military activities." The defense secretary spoke during an
October 24 interview with the editorial board of USA Today.
Rumsfeld told a questioner that the Moslem world must "take back their
religion and not allow people to pervert it the way the al-Qaida
leadership is perverting it." He said that during his travels in the
Middle East he found people "who said that to me in different
countries ... and who recognized the importance of that."
"There have been some terrific statements by religious leaders in
Moslem countries pointing out the lies that the Taliban is putting out
and the fact that the principles they're putting forward are
fundamentally against their religion," he said.
Rumsfeld said there will be a post-Taliban Afghanistan, but "It isn't
easy and it's going to take some time." He said it will be up to the
Afghans to determine their future.
The U.S. role, he said, is to "stop the terrorism" and "as a country
who cares from a humanitarian standpoint, do what we can to help the
people." He said the United States should work with other countries
and organizations to provide humanitarian aid. "If we can contribute
to some stability by that kind of food effort and other things we do,
we ought to do it," he said.
Following is a transcript of the interview:
(begin transcript)
NEWS TRANSCRIPT from the United States Department of Defense
DoD News Briefing
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld
Oct. 24, 2001
Interview with editorial board of USA Today
Rumsfeld: I have nothing to say by way of an opening. I'd be happy to
respond to questions. I assume you folks have questions.
Q: We have a few. First, thank you again for having us, and Torie,
thanks for setting this up for us. It's a big help. It helps us
understand what's going on.
What you have here is members of the Editorial Board and several of
the news staff. We'll just go our usual custom, which is just to go
through an informal Q&A, though it's all on the record.
A: Good.
Q: Whatever happens in Afghanistan will certainly go a long way toward
defining the credibility of the president's war objectives, so it
seems particularly important to define success sharply there.
As precisely as possible, what's your vision of success in Afghanistan
and particularly how will it help win hearts and minds in the Muslim
world?
A: You should be in the Pentagon press corps. You always ask two
questions in one. (Laughter)
Q: And a follow-up. (Laughter)
A: Yeah, you'd fit right in. Why are you an editor? --success in
Afghanistan. It seems to me that the president's purpose in this
effort is to root out terrorists and terrorist networks and to stop
terrorists and people harboring terrorists from doing so. The reason
that has to be done is because there's no way to defend every where at
every time against every conceivable threat that somebody can think
up. Whoever would have thought of plastic knives and using them, U.S.
aircraft crash into buildings?
There is no way to defend every where at every time against every
technique. Therefore you simply have to go after them.
I don't disagree with you. I guess I do agree, almost agree, that what
happens in Afghanistan is important to the credibility of the efforts.
The task, obviously, is to stop those people from terrorizing people
and to stop the Taliban from harboring the al Qaida and to end up with
an Afghanistan that is not harboring terrorists or engaged in
terrorism. And it is not something that's going to be easily done.
It's not something that's going to be quickly done. It is a very
difficult situation as anyone knows who takes a look at the
circumstances and the lay of the land.
I have tried very hard to help people understand the difficulty of the
task and I've been impressed that people seem to understand that and
they understand that it is like looking for a needle in a haystack and
that they don't have armies that you can go compete with and the
navies and air forces. And what we have to do is have a sustained
effort across a broad front that makes life so difficult for those two
categories of people that they stop doing what they've been doing.
It is not a national problem. It is not Afghanistan. It is not the
Afghan people. It is a network that are [is] across the globe. And to
really deal with it you have to clearly deal with the problem in
Afghanistan but you also have to deal with the other 50 cells around
the world. Drying up their money, arresting people, interrogating
people, gathering intelligence, doing some overt military activities
as well as some covert military activities.
Q: A year from now terrorists, Muslims, Americans, will all have an
impression of what Afghanistan has meant at that point. By that time
do you have to have rooted out the terrorists, captured or killed bin
Laden? And how are you going to have that at the end be a positive
message to the Muslim world?
A: I think people in the Moslem world who think about it carefully and
who understand Islam understand that their religion's being hijacked
and it is not going to be saved by non-Muslims. It's going to be saved
by Muslims. And they're going to have to take back their religion and
not allow people to pervert it the way the al Qaida leadership is
perverting it.
As I traveled around the Middle East I found people who felt that way,
who said that to me in different countries in the Middle East, and who
recognized the importance of that.
We, for our part, while we can't solve the problem that is -- this is
not a clash of religions or a clash of civilizations as some people
have suggested, this is a clash within the Moslem world. There are
many, many more people who don't agree with the perverted version that
al Qaida's promoting than do agree with it.
Does that mean there aren't going to be demonstrations? Sure, there
always have been, there always will be, I suspect. Do we have to do
everything in the world to help people understand it's not a matter of
a religion or a race or even a country or a people, it's a matter of
terrorists, and we do have to do everything we can.
We start out with a pretty good record as the country. It was the
United States and a coalition that went in and saved Kuwait at
considerable expense and some loss of life. We've been on the side of
Moslems in Kosovo and in Bosnia, and humanitarian assistance in
Somalia. We were the biggest food donor in Afghanistan before
September 11th and now many multiples of anybody else with the latest
proposal of $320 million.
Do we have to do a good job? Sure. The Taliban are lying through their
teeth. They are actively using mosques and schools and hospitals for
locations for command and control and for barracks and for their
various activities. They're putting artillery pieces around schools
and in residential areas, hoping they will not be hit because there
will be collateral damage. They have actively gone out and lied about
the civilian casualties and taken press to places where they would see
things that they contended were something other than what they really
were. It is not an easy job when those images are all across the
globe. It's a hard job. We have to recognize that and we have to do
what we can to help the world understand that they are what they are.
The Taliban has been vicious to women in that country. It's been
vicious to the people in that country that are starving. It is not
well liked by those people that know that they're taking their
military capabilities and sticking them in close proximity to things
like hospitals and schools and highly populated areas because they
know that they're putting those people at risk.
Now the truth ultimately will come out. Will there be some bumpy times
between now and then? You bet. And will there be some people who are
killed, who ought not to have been, killed in this conflict? There
will be. Some will be killed through errant weapons, none of which are
100 percent in terms of their performance, just like our cars aren't.
And we know that. The numbers of people on the ground firing up at our
aircraft, that ordnance comes down and hits people as well and kills
people. The opposition forces are shooting at the Taliban forces and
people are going to get killed there. So it is not readily apparent
when somebody's dead as to exactly where the ordnance came from.
I know for a fact that we are just being enormously careful. We are
doing everything humanly possible to try to avoid collateral damage.
We're focusing everything on military targets.
Q: Do you need to get bin Laden to succeed or is driving him out good
enough?
A: My attitude is if he were gone tomorrow the same problem would
exist. He's got a whole bunch of lieutenants that have been trained
and they've got bank accounts all over and they've got cells in 50 or
60 countries. Would you want to stop him? Sure. Would you want to stop
the rest of his lieutenants? You bet. But I don't get up every morning
and say that's the end, the goal and the end point of this thing. I
think that would be a big mistake.
Furthermore, the al Qaida is just one of the networks.
Q: Long before September 11th you talked about the need to transform
the military that face some of the very same threats we're facing
today. How well positioned is the military to fight the war on
terrorism and what needs to change to fight this long war we've been
told it's going to be?
A: A lot needs to change. I think first how we think needs to change.
It's very difficult for all of us to live for a long period of time
with a set of facts and a set of circumstances and suddenly have
things change so dramatically, and then have to think about how do we
deal with that? What ought we to be doing given that new set of facts?
You can go back in time, or you can also go forward in time and ask
that question. Let's assume that there's a nuclear or a chemical or a
biological attack on the United States a year from now. And that
involves not thousands, but tens of thousands of human beings.
What would I, as secretary of defense, want to have done over the
coming 12 months to either find a way to deter that from happening or
to defend against it if that's humanly possible; or through
preemption, prevented it; or through security, mitigated the damage;
or through consequence management once it happened dealt with it in a
way that was better than would otherwise be the case if I did not
transport myself a year forward and ask myself that question.
Now how do you get people to do that? They've got an in-box, they've
got a telephone, things are going on. They're youngster's playing in a
pee-wee soccer game. They're worried about anthrax or something else.
How do you get them to go full stop and put yourself out there and
think of that event, try to get those images in your mind's
television. Get those images on the front page of USA Today and say
what are all of those things I should be doing now? What kind of
leadership can I provide? What kind of funding ought I to be doing?
What kind of cautions for the people ought we to be putting out?
Balance between frightening people and causing constructive action.
How do you do it in a big institution like this where you have no
ability really to communicate to the 1.5 to 2 million people involved
-- more than that, counting the reserves -- without having -- you're
simultaneously speaking to multiple audiences. You're talking to the
press, you're talking to the public, you're talking to the rest of the
government. You're talking to the Congress. And every time you open
your mouth you are.
I was amused, someone wrote in the press that I should not have said
what I said at a press conference about being concerned about people
in government leaking classified information. I should have said it to
people in government. Which is amusing when you think about it.
There's no way to speak to people in government except through the
media. The government is so big. I can't talk to the people in this
building without using that vehicle for communication.
But it is very hard for us to all stop. I watch people's behavior, my
senior staff and the military, and I'll stop them and say look, that
makes a lot of sense before September 11th. How do you feel about the
priority now? And yet they go along a track. We all do. We're human
beings.
So it takes an awful lot to jar people into thinking things fresh. We
do need a lot of transformation in this building. There's no question.
We needed it before September 11th, we need it now. The only
difference is that now more people understand it than did before
September 11th.
Q: Mr. Secretary, if I could just follow up on that. If you could
answer the question, look at it again from the point of --
A: (inaudible) (Laughter)
Q: Just from the point of the Defense Department.
You've been an early champion of transformation, and not always with
complete success and now it seems like you will have the impetus.
If you look over the next year or so how will we know that the
Pentagon has been, the Defense Department has been transformed? How
will it look different, feel different, what will the signs be?
A: It won't be ever transformed because life is not static. It doesn't
go from this to that, it's a continuum.
So what you've got to do is figure out a way to create a culture in an
organization where things used to change every 20 years, and weapons
would last 20-30 years. Now the technologies change so much faster and
the spread of those technologies to countries that never would have
had them before is taking place so much more rapidly, that the first
thing one has to do is to not think in a static way -- we're not
transformed/we are transformed. In fact we are transforming as we sit
here and we will have to continue and we'll have to do it on an
accelerated basis. It is a very hard thing for people to do if you
think of the lead times.
This building, 25 years ago you could produce a weapon system in five,
ten years and today it's 15, 20 years. At a time when everything's
moving much more rapidly. So you really -- it is an institution that
has been functioning on a threat-based strategy and we've tried to
shift it to a capability-based strategy. We know what the basic,
immediate static threats are. Iraq, North Korea. You can deal with
that.
But if we were to sit here fat, dumb and happy thinking that those are
the threats, and yet the capabilities we're talking about are swirling
around the world in the hands of all kinds of people, we can't do
that. We've got to be oriented and arranged and designed, physically
and attitudinally to be a capability-based strategy, both from the
standpoint of a conventional capability and also the asymmetrical
capabilities. And indeed, the weapons of mass destruction.
Q: Mr. Secretary I'll ask a two-part question.
A: Oh, I knew you would. (Laughter)
Q: First, I believe you have been vaccinated against anthrax.
A: No.
Q: You haven't?
A: No.
Q: Can you tell me whether the White House and Capitol Hill have
gotten anthrax?
A: I don't know. I don't think the Pentagon's received any but I
wouldn't know if it were quite recently.
A2: No.
Q: Moving to the second part --
A: Wait a second. Not to our knowledge.
Q: The second part, there seems to be growing evidence, we don't know
where this anthrax seems to be coming from, there are people who have
said publicly that it's looking like there's only a couple of places
it can come and Iraq is one of them.
Can you tell us what the thinking, if the thinking is evolving in this
building about Iraq, and especially in light of this new anthrax
front?
A: First, I don't know that the evidence is conclusive yet as to the
anthrax. I think people are still looking at it quite seriously.
They've come to some preliminary conclusions that I've been briefed
on, but first reports tend not to be right so I kind of like to let
things settle a little bit before I come to conclusions on it.
With respect to Iraq as a country, it obviously is a country that's
been on the terrorist list for many, many years along with six, seven,
eight other countries, and it is a country that has sponsored
terrorism and conducted terrorism. It's also a country that's used
weapons of mass destruction against its neighbors as well as against
its own people. So it is a country that along with Syria and Libya and
North Korea and Cuba, Iran -- that's pretty much the list that comes
to mind when you talk about states that are actively involved in
terrorist activities.
Q: How is the Pentagon handling its mail?
A: I don't know.
A2: It's a big facility outside here that handles it, and on October
12th, I think it was, we issued direction to all DoD employees to talk
about what to look for, the kinds of suspicious packages, things that
-- and they two or three weeks ago increased slightly, the actual
handlers of it wear gloves, masks, that sort of things.
A: They used to have a facility where they all came in and it was
looked at. Not for anthrax, but for bombs and things like that. Isn't
that correct?
A2: Uh huh.
A: More recently they started out I think urging people voluntarily to
wear masks and gloves in handling things, and I think that the
voluntary aspect of it has ended. I think with the information that
has come out with respect to some recent anthrax analysis, that people
have been told -- either have been or are being today told -- that
we're going to require people to wear masks. Because some of the
versions of anthrax look like they are inhalable, sufficiently the
quality to be inhalable.
Q: Back on that question of anthrax origin. Without saying, and the
conclusions are preliminary, so without saying where exactly the
anthrax came from, do you believe now that there is a sponsorship and
that these anthrax attacks are part of a coordinated terrorist attack?
A: I don't know at the moment. It does appear that there's enough of
it going on that it is not disorganized or happenstance. Who is behind
it is something that I'm not in a position to speculate on.
Q: I'd like to get back to war goals, and I'll ask a one-part
question, but it may have a follow-up on your answer.
A: You're never going to make it --
Q: I already knew that.
A: The president said that one of his goals was to get bin Laden dead
or alive.
A: Uh huh.
Q: Are you confident that you will achieve that goal?
A: Well, it is a very difficult thing to do. It's a big world. There
are lots of countries. He's got a lot of money, he's got a lot of
people who support him, and I just don't know whether we'll be
successful. Clearly, it would be highly desirable to find him and stop
him and his key people and there are a lot of them. We're not looking
for one person. We're looking for a whole crowd. And that's our intent
and our intention.
How can anyone know what the outcome is going to be until you get
there?
A: I do have a follow-up because I've got to protect my career.
Q: Right.
A: A goal you mentioned was to topple the Taliban regime, the growing
Taliban, you mentioned that at one of your press conferences a week or
two ago.
Do you still believe that that's possible given the experience you've
witnessed now after several weeks of bombing?
A: Several weeks?
A2: Three and a half.
A: Has it been that long? I'll be darned. I really was surprised. I
was thinking it was something like 10 or 12 days, but it's three
weeks.
Yes. I think there will be a post-Taliban Afghanistan. That is easier
than finding a single person. It isn't easy and it's going to take
some time. These are very tough people who they've been fighting the
Soviet Union, they've been fighting each other, they've made careers
out of fighting. They're not going to roll over. So it's going to take
some real effort and it's going to take some time, and as I say, it
won't be easy. But there will be a post-Taliban Afghanistan.
Q: Mr. Secretary, besides that goal, can you define two other specific
things that the American people can see and say okay, that's been
done, so these two things help us define that we've been successful
there.
A: You're probably not old enough, but if in your mind's eye you could
go back to the beginning of the Cold War, say for the sake of argument
1946-1950, in that period, and then the early '50s, and say what would
represent success? What two things would happen that would tell the
people of the United States that you've been successful? The answer
would have to be that you had deterred an aggressive expansionist
Soviet Union that was armed to the teeth from occupying Western Europe
and spreading communism across the globe. So it's the absence of
something that you're looking for.
It didn't end with the signing ceremony on the battle ship Missouri.
It ended because it fell apart from within. It's like a house of
cards, suddenly Romania goes, East Germany goes, Poland goes, Russia
goes, and all of a sudden there was no Soviet Union. No one predicted
it, no one knew this was going to happen. How did it happen? It
happened because a lot of people over a long time made it very clear
to those folks that if they kept doing what they were doing they
weren't going to accomplish what their goal was, and they were doing
it at such high expense as a percentage of their GDP [gross domestic
product] that finally the inside rotted out and people got sick and
tired of it. It took dedication and investment over a long, long
period of time. And yet there was never a thing that happened in those
50 years that was notable. It was the end that was notable.
What do I mean? If we do a terrific job arresting people all across
the globe, interrogating them, jailing them, finding out what they
know, and if we do a wonderful job of blocking bank accounts and
drying up their funds, and if we systematically go around this world
and find terrorists and see that they stop terrorizing, and if we make
it very unpleasant for the countries that are actively harboring and
facilitating and financing and maybe even just tolerating terrorists
in their country, terrorism will be reduced.
Will it go away completely? No. Are we ever going to be able to stop
people from wanting to terrorize each other? No, I suspect not.
International terrorism, global terrorism, I think we can do a lot
for. But you're still going to have people in a single country.
There may still be people in a post-Taliban Afghanistan that kill each
other and try to terrorize their neighbors, different tribes, and no
one's going to change -- at least no one around the Pentagon's going
to change the nature of human beings. They're still going to be doing
that. But in terms of well financed global networks, I think we can do
a lot with that, and we really won't know when it's over until it
stops, that kind of terrorism stops on a mass scale and people don't
feel threatened.
Q: What about militarily?
A: The military is just a piece of this puzzle. Without the
intelligence gathering across the globe, without the development of
actionable intelligence that one can then go do something about,
either dry up their bank account, arrest them, or kill them as we're
trying to do in Afghanistan, you can't do anything. So it's all a part
of it. There isn't a military segment of it that's distinguishable
from the rest of it. It is a piece, but not separably. It's different.
Q: You've spoken in response to others' questions about changing the
culture of priorities within your own department, but it strikes me
that's only half the battle. Every secretary of defense has 535
self-appointed other secretaries of defense. When you and I were
younger, you were one of them who --
A: Let's not get mean. (Laughter)
Q: I was on the Hill at the same time.
Seriously, every secretary of defense has to fight the battle of
unwanted projects being continued indefinitely, unwanted bases kept
open indefinitely, different priorities. Do you have any hope or
reason to believe that the dramatic incidents of this fall give you
any better club than you had last spring in terms of trying to impress
upon your friends on the Hill that they ought to be willing to accede
a little more to your priorities instead of theirs?
A: Well, time will tell. I just had a breakfast sitting here this
morning at 7:30 or 8:00 with a bunch of congressmen and senators,
talking about that and BRAC [base realignment and closure] and the
base closing issues. If I had to take a wild flying guess I would say
yeah, I think there is a feeling on the Hill, a desire to be more
cooperative than before. I think they recognize the situation is
serious. And Congress, both parties, have been I feel quite responsive
to the needs that have been put forward.
Does that mean that everyone's going to suddenly behave totally
differently? I guess not. But I suspect we'll be somewhat more
successful. I hope so. It takes a lot of work and a lot of effort.
Q: Mr. Secretary, let's talk about a post-Taliban Afghanistan. Members
of your own staff have talked about Taliban as more than a movement
than a government, and that even if the Northern Alliance or whoever
it is is in Kabul ruling, that there will probably be a Taliban
stronghold in the south around Kandahar which is where al Qaida is
based.
So what has the United States really gotten if there is a different
government in Kabul but a Taliban stronghold guarding an al Qaida --
A: I didn't state that as my goal. My goal is to stop terrorism and
stop the terrorists and stop the Taliban from fostering terrorism and
facilitating it and harboring the al Qaida. Someone can control Kabul
and somebody can control Kandahar and if they're not terrorizing us
and the rest of the world, I'll be a happier person, be off on other
things.
Q: And do you think that that will actually, a partitioned country
will help --
A: I'm not one of those who thinks I'm so smart I can tell other
people in other parts of the world how they ought to live their lives.
And I'll be darned if I know what's going to be best for Afghanistan.
My guess is, even if I thought I know, they're going to have to figure
it out for themselves. What they do on the ground is going to
determine how they live. All we need to do is stop the terrorism. Then
as a country who cares from a humanitarian standpoint, do what we can
to help the people. To the extent we can be helpful in the early
period with other countries, organizations, and letting them find the
level or arrangements that they feel comfortable with, we ought to try
to do it. If we can contribute to some stability by that kind of food
effort and other things we do, we ought to do it. But my gosh, I'd be
like an amateur brain surgeon if I sat over here in the Pentagon and
said I think they ought to do this, that and the other thing. That's
not for me.
Q: Mr. Secretary, just to follow up on the humanitarian issue. As you
move into winter in Afghanistan does the Department of Defense have
any plans to move beyond its air dropping program? Air dropping food?
Especially if we have a ground presence there. Are there plans to go
beyond that?
A: We've done the flutter dropping and we've also done the containers
with chutes that go down, and there's no question if there is good
land bridges that the Pentagon will be involved in various types of
humanitarian assistance. And the United States already is through AID
[Agency for International Development] and various international
organizations.
Q: By land bridges, land bridges that our forces create?
A: I didn't say that. It's just access. If you're not going to do it
from the air, you can't do it from underground. So you've only got one
other choice and that's across the land. It doesn't matter who's
controlling the real estate, although I much prefer our humanitarian
assistance to go to people who are fighting Taliban rather than the
Taliban.
Q: I wanted to ask you a little bit about, going back to earlier
comments you made, and you mentioned all of the things the United
States has done that has helped Muslims in Kuwait and Kosovo and we
were the biggest food donor into Afghanistan even before September
11th. That message does not seem to have penetrated very well in that
region.
A: Help us.
Q: And it's not just the Taliban who is lying about what the United
States is doing or what we're about in the region.
I'm wondering what more the U.S. government, I don't know how much of
this would be in the Pentagon's purview, but can or should be doing to
get those messages out in a way that will have an effect. Because part
of the reasons terrorists are thriving there is they have a lot of
support from the rest of the population.
A: It's a good question. It's a tough question. It's a question we
think a lot about. All of us have got to be willing to invest more
time and more money and more effort in doing that, and we are. We've
got a radio program that's going on there, we're dropping leaflets. We
worry about the neighboring countries, Moslem countries, we don't want
them to come away with the impression that the Taliban are correct,
that the United States -- you look on television and you see big --
this is Kabul, it says. And then you see big smoke coming up and it
looks like the Americans are in there bombing Kabul. We're not bombing
Kabul. We're hitting military targets on the outskirts of Kabul, and
yet the image of it is clearly one, and how in the world do you
overcome that? I don't know.
I spend an inordinate amount of time myself on television and with the
press. It's not how I normally would prefer to spend my day. There's a
lot of other things I should be doing. The same with other people in
this building, but we have to do it.
I go on al Qaida [al Jazeera] [transcript:
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Oct2001/t10172001_t1016sd.html].
Yesterday I went on Voice of America [ transcript:
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Oct2001/t10232001_t1023voa.html] which
broadcasts over there, and we simply all have to do it, and we have to
keep getting Moslems to do it, and they're doing it, a lot of them
are. There's been some terrific statements by religious leaders in
Moslem countries pointing out the lies that Taliban is putting out and
the fact that the principles they're putting forward are fundamentally
against their religion.
I've talked to the leaders in the region about doing more in this
regard, and they are, and they are with good reason. They've got to
worry also that the people in their countries start believing this
twisted approach to the world.
Q: Mr. Secretary, the American people, civilians, are now being forced
to think about things that we kind of used to leave to the military,
namely how to prepare for the next threat without knowing what the
next threat is.
What advice can you give to us, to Americans on how to do this?
A: I wish I had a good, simple, easy answer that fit on a bumper
sticker, but I don't. The answer is unbumperstickerable. (Laughter)
We are what we are. We are free people. And our whole society is
structured and arranged and built and organized around freedom, so
people can say what they want and do what they want and go where they
want and not worry about someone killing them, and not worry about
some unseen things.
Today if a person has to worry about the water they drink and the air
they drink and their physical safety if they're working in a building
somewhere and for their children, then we're not what we are. And yet
the proliferation of these technologies and the existence of these
networks have created an environment, a connection between the
willingness to kill large numbers of human beings regardless of their
religion or their race or their sex, and simultaneously the
availability of these kinds of technologies that enable you to do
large numbers of people simultaneously.
What all people can do is to, in my view, recognize that. As the
president said, live with a sense of heightened awareness. Know that
mail can be bad. Know that things can happen and yet not stop living.
You can't stop living. We have to go out and do what we do. The
terrorists win if we stop living. And furthermore, there's not a whole
lot that any single individual can do other than use good judgment.
The other thing we can do is to support a government that's decided
that that's not the way we want to live, and we choose to live as free
people and therefore we've got to change the way other people are
living, the terrorists, and be supportive of that.
Q: I'd like to follow up on one point you made earlier about this is
not just a military war. There are five fronts. You went to Saudi
Arabia, Pakistan. Are you disappointed following those talks that the
Saudis are not cooperating more on the financial front to help freeze
the assets and that the Pakistanis are not providing more intelligence
on where bin Laden may be?
A: No. I am really very, very pleased with the support and the
cooperation we're getting from countries all across the globe. We're
getting an awful lot that's highly visible, and we're getting also a
great deal that is not visible. It is not for me to say what another
country wants to do with respect to this effort. It's not for me to
say with respect to what they do decide to do whether they should do
it publicly or privately.
My goal is to get the maximum amount of cooperation -- intelligence,
support, whatever -- from the maximum number of countries. If that
means that some want to do it in one way and another wants to do it
another way and some want to do it publicly and some want to do it
privately, more power to them. We need the help and we need the effort
and Saudi Arabia has been very cooperative. And Pakistan is being very
cooperative. It happens I did not go to Pakistan, incidentally. I went
to Egypt and --
(Laughter)
Q: In this instance though with Saudi Arabia, I know we've had an
interesting relationship with the Saudis and we've been understanding,
the United States has been understanding of the way they need to play
to their public opinion, but isn't it the case that in this instance
one of the things the United States needs is for governments in that
region to make the case for the campaign against terrorism and to not
turn the air waves over to anti-American venom or just indifferent to
the campaign? Don't we need the Saudis to actually be out there trying
to make the case that this military campaign is the right thing to be
doing?
A: We need people to do that which they feel they can do. The Saudis
have been and are being very, very helpful. The Saudis broke
diplomatic relations with the Taliban. Not a little thing. They have
done any number of things, and I leave it to them to describe what it
is they're doing, but they're doing a lot and we appreciate it.
Q: After the September 11th attacks the head of the FBI had to get on
television and give out an 800 number begging for Arabic translation
help. I'm wondering whether you think the Department of Defense has
all of the language capabilities it needs and whether you think it's
being used efficiently.
A: No. In our Quadrennial Defense Review period starting last January
we raised that issue and have been looking at what the military
academies and the various schools around, what they're teaching and
how we can improve the language capabilities.
Certainly when you have a problem in a particular region there's
always that need, so people who have those capabilities and have
retired or were available doing less important things tend to get
scooped up and brought into the process and tend to be quite willing
to do that. But the short answer is no, I'm not happy with the
language skills of myself, to start with. I'm still working on
English.
The department clearly needs to have a focus on distinctive languages
that can be helpful in the 21st Century.
Q: Is there anything that we need to be doing that's being hindered by
that lack?
A: Well, I would -- is there anything we need to be doing? Certainly.
I mean just take the difference between two days and three days to
translate something. Does it make any difference? It might. You never
know. I can't prove that. But I tend to be a little impatient and have
a sense of urgency. I think of -- (Laughter) I do. I think of the God
awful things that can happen in this world and it gives you all the
incentive you can imagine to get up early and stay up late to try to
get things done. And if you're in the law enforcement business or
you're doing something that, intelligence gathering, the difference
between two days and three days can be all the difference in the
world.
So I don't know what it might be, but I don't doubt for a minute that
there are things we're not doing as well or as fast that we ought to
be doing because of it.
Q: Mr. Secretary, polling of public attitudes in past wars have always
shown that there's really strong public support for military action at
the start of a war, but as time goes on, if there are increasing U.S.
casualties or collateral damage or killing of civilians in an area,
that public opinion quickly dwindles. Is that a concern for you if
this carries on for a long time?
A: There are going to be loss of life -- there already have been. It
started on September 11th in this building. And there are going to be
more. Let there be no doubt.
Well who knows? I think you make a mistake to bet against the American
people. If you think about it, 50 years, 40 years, however long it was
with the Cold War, presidents of different political parties, left,
right, center; Congresses of different parties, left, right, center;
European governments going with Euro-communism for a period, and
swinging around from the right to the left and the Socialists and the
Christian Democrats. And yet as an entity the West hung together and
saw it thorough. At great expense. When I was ambassador to NATO in
the early '70s I'd have to fly back to testify against the amendments
to reduce forces in Europe and to pull out of Europe and to give it up
and throw in the towel, and we'd win by three, four, five votes, but
here we are. No Soviet Union.
The other advantage you have, if you want to call it an advantage is
that from time to time -- I was sitting at this breakfast table on the
11th, and a bunch of supporters of the defense of what I was trying to
do, transformation and so forth, and the problem with the Social
Security lockbox. And they said look, the people we're trying to get
to vote with us are worried about voting in a way that can be
characterized by their political opponents as dipping into the Social
Security lockbox. They said it's not a defense issue, it's a political
problem we've got.
I sat here and said at breakfast, a whole table of these folks,
friends of mine, I said look -- I chaired the Ballistic Missile Threat
Commission. In 1998 we had an Indian nuclear explosion, a Pakistani
nuclear explosion, we had the Taepo Dong fired out of North Korea, we
had the Shanghai fired out of Iran and we had the Gawri missile fired
out of Pakistan. It was about every three months some big event went
on that directly related to weapons of mass destruction and ballistic
missiles.
I said it registers on people when that happens. I said as sure as
we're sitting here in the next six months there's going to be an event
that's going to register and those people who are worried about the
lockbox will not want to be on the wrong side of that issue. And then
walked in and -- that's going to help us.
There will be things that are going to happen that will remind people
that the goal in the 21st Century, with the power of those weapons the
goal is not to win with them, the goal is to never have them used. The
only way you can do that is to do something before the fact. That
means the margin for error is modest.
Thank you folks, nice to see you all.
If you have any good ideas about how we can do our message better I'd
sure like to hear them.
Q: -- on the Kitty Hawk?
A: Do you want to parachute on or do you want to be taken on --
Q: (inaudible)
A: No.
Q: (inaudible)
A: No. There was an anthrax program for the Pentagon that was on for a
period of time, and then the supply ran down to next to nothing and
the company that was making it had trouble doing it. So the supply is
very limited and it's being used for people that are thought to be at
particular risk, as I recall.
Q: (inaudible)
A: She can get you --
A2: It's down to --
Q: (inaudible)
A: All the key people who were scheduled to get the series of shots,
the long series of shots.
(end transcript)
(Distributed by the Office of International Information Programs, U.S.
Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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