04 November 2001
Transcript: Afghanistan Campaign Proceeding As Planned, Myers Says
(General Richard Myers interviewed on "Meet the Press") (5550)
The allied military campaign against Taliban forces in Afghanistan is
going "exactly according to our plans," according to Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard B. Myers.
Appearing November 4 on NBC's "Meet the Press," Myers said the
campaign has suppressed Taliban air defenses, disrupted supply,
communication and transport capabilities and destroyed most Taliban
helicopters.
"They have a substantial force left," Myers said, "but at this point
in the campaign, that's exactly what we expected." Weather will be a
concern for military forces as winter sets in in Afghanistan, he said,
but "we're going to fight right through the winter. The winter is not
going to stop us from doing what we have to do."
He added that U.S. forces are resupplying the Afghan opposition with
ammunition, food and blankets, and hope to provide cold weather gear
in the near future. "The fighting forces on the side of the opposition
on our side will be much better prepared for winter than will the
Taliban," he said.
"If you remember, the first part of our campaign against the Taliban
was going against the warehouses," Myers said. "It was going against
air defenses, and their ammunition supplies, and we've done a pretty
good job of taking those things out. So what's left for the Taliban is
what they have on their back and what they have stored in caves and
other places around Afghanistan, which we don't think is very much. So
as winter wears on, we think the advantage, as it has been all along,
will continue to be with the opposition forces."
Asked about Taliban claims of civilian losses due to U.S. bombs, Myers
said that "every time we hear a claim from the Taliban, we ought to
really think about it as psychological warfare. They have made lots of
claims in the last four weeks as we've been prosecuting this war. Most
of them, we think and believe, are absolutely false."
On the question of continuing the offensive during the Muslim
religious holiday period of Ramadan, Myers said "Our response is that
on September 11, the United States and all -- for that matter, all
freedom-loving people -- were directly attacked. They were attacked by
al Qaeda and those who support them. They chose that time. We didn't
choose that time. So they chose the time that this war was going to
start, and so we're going to proceed on this global war on terrorism.
... We'll be sensitive, as we have been. The Taliban like to park
their air defense assets and some of their more precious assets in
their mosques and so forth, and we're not -- we're not going to hit
those. They know that. They'll use women and children and residential
areas as shields for their military equipment. We know that, and we're
not going to hit that, but we're going to prosecute this war right
through the winter."
Following is a transcript of the Myers interview:
(begin transcript)
United States Department of Defense
NEWS TRANSCRIPT
Presenter: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard B.
Myers
Sunday, November 4, 2001
Gen. Myers Interview with Meet the Press, NBC TV
MR. RUSSERT: But first, the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, General Richard Myers. General, welcome to "Meet the Press."
GEN. MYERS: Thank you, Tim.
MR. RUSSERT: How goes the war in Afghanistan?
GEN. MYERS: Well, I'd say in a word it's going according to plan. The
objectives are to try to capture or bring to justice as many of al
Qaeda as we possibly can in Afghanistan. The other part of that, of
course, is to take the Taliban regime down to the point where they can
no longer support al Qaeda.
MR. RUSSERT: The Taliban again yesterday made a claim that they shot
down a United States helicopter. Your reaction?
GEN. MYERS: My reaction is that every time we hear a claim from the
Taliban, we ought to really think about it as psychological warfare.
They have made lots of claims in the last four weeks as we've been
prosecuting this war. Most of them, we think and believe, are
absolutely false. They did not shoot down a helicopter, a U.S.
helicopter yesterday. In fact, they have not shot down any U.S.
aircraft.
MR. RUSSERT: We did lose a helicopter due to a crash in weather?
GEN. MYERS: Yes, we did. The helicopter -- in fact, there were two
helicopters that were on a rescue mission to rescue one of our U.S.
service members that had been taken ill that was helping out an
opposition group, and these helicopters were on their way to rescue
that individual. Weather was a factor, and we think it was a factor in
the fact that this helicopter had to sit down and sit down fairly
hard. It injured four people. The other helicopter stayed in the area,
and in a couple of hours, we rescued everybody and brought them out.
The helicopter that had to sit down hard was damaged beyond flyable
state, and so we destroyed it.
MR. RUSSERT: So the enemy could not find it and -
GEN. MYERS: Absolutely. Yes.
MR. RUSSERT: How big a problem is the weather -- the freezing rain,
the coming snows?
GEN. MYERS: In any combat operation or any conflict, weather's
probably your number one concern. It's no different in Afghanistan. So
as winter sets on, that will be an issue that we'll deal with. But let
me assure people that we're going to fight right through the winter.
The winter is not going to stop us from doing what we have to do.
We are resupplying the opposition with ammunition, with food, with
blankets. We hope in the not-too-distant future with cold weather
gear. The fighting forces on the side of the opposition on our side
will be much better prepared for winter than will the Taliban.
If you remember, the first part of our campaign against the Taliban
was going against the warehouses. It was going against air defenses,
and their ammunition supplies, and we've done a pretty good job of
taking those things out. So what's left for the Taliban is what they
have on their back and what they have stored in caves and other places
around Afghanistan, which we don't think is very much. So as winter
wears on, we think the advantage, as it has been all along, will
continue to be with the opposition forces.
MR. RUSSERT: On October 20, there was a commando raid by U.S. forces
into Afghanistan. You showed pictures of people being parachuted in
and some infrared pictures and things like that.
A "New Yorker" magazine today reports that during that exercise, that
operation, 12 U.S. soldiers were wounded, three seriously. Is that
accurate?
GEN. MYERS: Let me just tell you exactly what happened, and I don't
think that report is accurate in the context that they -- that it was
written.
As you know, we lost two individuals to a helicopter accident before
they even went into Afghanistan. They were the reserve force sitting
back, waiting to respond
--
MR. RUSSERT: In Pakistan.
GEN. MYERS: -- in Pakistan -- waiting in case they were needed. They
were not needed, but this helicopter landing in a dust storm rolled
over on landing and tragically, two service members were killed. Two
were injured in that one, as well.
The force that went in on the ground, there were a couple of parachute
injuries that we expected, and those happened, and there were some
other wounds from some of the action and some of the activity that
they were undergoing, but none of it was inflicted by the enemy. We
took -- essentially, I think the article -- I've not read the article,
but I've heard that it portrays that we ran into some stiff
resistance. That's simply not true. There was no resistance. The
Taliban were in complete disarray.
MR. RUSSERT: The article said that there was a fire fight, and that
the Taliban not only had rifle fire, but also mortars and grenades in
response to the U.S., and 12 U.S. soldiers were injured, three
seriously.
GEN. MYERS: And that's not true. That's not true. I -- my guess is, my
belief is that every soldier that came back from that particular raid
is back on duty today, none of them seriously injured, certainly none
of them injured by the Taliban. The Taliban probably did return fire
and they had all those capabilities. We know from other reporting that
they were trying to muster greater capabilities, and they were unable
to do so. Our soldiers just simply overwhelmed them.
MR. RUSSERT: The also (sic) also says there was grave concern within
the special operations community about being sent into an operation
like that, suggesting they were not totally prepared or properly
planned.
GEN. MYERS: Nothing could be further from the truth. This operation
was planned for some time. The leader of the special operations
community, General Charlie Holland, down in Tampa, Florida, was fully
aware of what was going on, was participating in the planning, and
when it came down to it, we were all very satisfied that we were ready
to go in. In fact, we executed that exactly as we thought we would do.
The fact that we damaged a helicopter inside the compound we went
into, that's just one of the things in war that's going to happen. We
know when we're sitting down helicopters with lots of troops in a
dusty environment that there are going to be some incidents like that,
and there were, in this case, but it went -- from my view, it went
flawlessly.
MR. RUSSERT: You are an Air Force general. You were selected because
of your knowledge of space defense and developmental plans of that
nature. Now you're overseeing what is in significant part a special
operations war. Are you comfortable with that?
GEN. MYERS: I'm very comfortable. First of all, the value added that I
bring to this is 36 years of military experience, some in air combat,
some in staff jobs, some in other command positions. So I would say
you'll have to ask the President, you'll have to ask Secretary
Rumsfeld. I suppose I was hired probably more for my leadership and
management capabilities than I was by any fact that I was -- or by the
fact that I was a space warrior or anything like that. I mean, that's
-- I think that was interesting, but that's not the reason they hired
me.
MR. RUSSERT: Is this the toughest challenge, the most difficult war,
you've encountered in your 36 years?
GEN. MYERS: I've said that before. I think in my 36 years, I don't
think the U.S. military's ever been asked to do anything as important
as this. This country, on September 11, was attacked. We were
intentionally attacked -- and civilians and innocents were
intentionally attacked and killed. Many different ethnic groups, many
cultures, many races, many countries, not just the United States, and
this is a threat that we can't just let go by the way. We have to take
this on, and it's going to be global in scope, and for that reason, I
think it's going to be -- it's the toughest thing, it's the most
important mission that we've ever been assigned.
MR. RUSSERT: As you know, General, there's intense interest in the
United States about how we are doing. In the fog of war, it's
sometimes difficult to get information. Let me show you some things
that have been written and give you a chance to respond.
This was "The Washington Post" on Friday, the headline, "Big ground
force seen as necessary to defeat Taliban. Bombing has left militia
largely intact. The attacks have not eliminated any measurable number
of Taliban troops. Northern Alliance forces have made no important
gains against the Taliban, despite claiming that they were only a few
days from reclaiming the northern city of Mazur- e Sharif, according
to military assessments here" -- that is, on the ground. "As far as
our information from the ground goes, a major chunk of the 50,000
Taliban army and much of its arsenal are pretty much intact after
three weeks of bombing,' says a senior Pakistani army official with
access to classified intelligence reports from Afghanistan. 'We may
not like it, but the fact is the Taliban military is not falling
apart, more so because most of its commanders are still alive and
loyal to Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban leader."
Your reaction?
GEN. MYERS: My reaction is I'll go back to almost your first question,
how is it going in Afghanistan? I think it's going exactly according
to our plans. We have taken down Taliban air defenses. We have
disrupted their ability to resupply their own forces. We took down
their transports, most of their helicopters. Most of their -- (clears
throat) -- excuse me -- most of their communications have been taken
down. The maximum (ph) are communicating now with runners, which is
obviously -- in Afghanistan, not the most efficient way to do that.
They have a substantial force left, but at this point in the campaign,
that's exactly what we expected. And, as I said earlier, now we're
starting to resupply the opposition groups. We've been doing that now
for a week or more, to make sure they have the ammunition, the food,
the blankets, the cold-weather gear to continue to take this fight to
the Taliban.
The same is not happening on the other side.
So I guess in a way, the Taliban are on their heels. They are not the
ones that have the initiative here. We have the initiative and the
opposition groups have the initiative. Just last night, the night
before, we put in a couple more teams with other opposition leaders,
and the more teams we get on the ground, the more effectively we'll
bring air power to bear on the Taliban lines, and we'll continue to do
that.
MR. RUSSERT: So that's a significant increase in the number of U.S.
personnel on the ground.
GEN. MYERS: It is. It's an increase, yes, sir.
MR. RUSSERT: There has (sic) been some mixed messages that people are
concerned about. This is what the Secretary of Defense told Tom Brokaw
on October 30, and I'll let you watch it for a second.
(Begin videotaped segment.)
SEC. RUMSFELD: There's no question but that the Taliban and the al
Qaeda still have substantial forces, and they've arrayed against the
opposition forces on the ground.
(End videotaped segment.)
MR. RUSSERT: Two weeks earlier than that, at a Pentagon briefing, this
is what Lieutenant General Newbold said, and I'll put it on the
screen: "The combat power of the Taliban has been eviscerated."
Is that still operative?
GEN. MYERS: I think if you'd ask General Newbold today, he would
probably choose another term. In fact, we were surprised that a Marine
even knew what "eviscerated" meant.
Sorry -- a lot of Air Force officers don't know what it means, either,
I will assure you.
No, I think that was a misstatement on General Newbold's terms, and I
think we do have substantial fights ahead of us. In some ways, they
have been eviscerated, but not in all ways, so we are pretty much
where I think I said we are. We have the initiative, the Taliban do
not.
MR. RUSSERT: Let me turn to the Northern Alliance. The headline in
"The Washington Post:" "Afghan rebels plan assault on Kabul." There
seems to be a different measurement of how effective the Northern
Alliance is. This is, again, "The Washington Post" on Friday: "A
growing number of Western and Pakistani military officials and
analysts fear that the combination of U.S. air strikes and Northern
Alliance guerrillas may be unable to bring down Afghanistan's Taliban
militia without assistance from significant U.S. and allied ground
forces. 'There's no way to win this with air alone,' said one Western
official, 'or even with only the Northern Alliance on the ground. It's
going to take U.S. ground forces.'"
GEN. MYERS: Again, the goal here is to rid Afghanistan of al Qaeda and
to do away with the Taliban regime that supports them and has been so
oppressive to the Afghan people.
I'm not going to get in and speculate on our future plans, but as
we've said before and numerous times, we're going to use the full
capability of the U.S. military, and that is not just air power, it's
not just ground forces, it's everything that we can bring to bear, and
I can assure you that every branch of the armed forces has played a
very important role in this conflict so far.
MR. RUSSERT: I obviously never want you to reveal any plans of
national security that would jeopardize our troops, but I do want to
explore this notion of the Northern Alliance, because it's of deep
concern, I think, to the American people.
Back in September, this is what "The Boston Globe" said: "The Northern
Alliance has begun to rise in the estimation of some Pentagon
strategists as a possible major factor in any sustained U.S. attack in
Afghanistan."
A couple of weeks later, the Secretary of Defense I think had a
different view, and I'll show it to you. "It is, I think, a question
as to whether or not the opposition forces, the Northern Alliance, the
tribes in the south, are going to pursue the Taliban and the al Qaeda
with the necessary energy and success one would like. That's an open
question. I think it's far too soon to say."
And this from on the ground: "'The Northern Alliance has not lived up
to the hopes and expectations of the U.S.,' retired General Syed
Rafaqat, a former Pakistani chief of staff said. 'Its military
capability, quality of leadership, and motivation of troops are
doubtful assets.'"
Are you concerned about the capability and the competence of the
Northern Alliance?
GEN. MYERS: As we've said from the outset, we were going to use those
forces inside Afghanistan that would be for ridding Afghanistan of the
Taliban. The Northern Alliance are a part of those forces. We have
teams with them now that are doing all sorts of liaison work, not just
calling in air strikes, but also working on what kind of equipment do
they need.
These are fighters that have been fighting the Taliban for a long,
long time. They are very confident. In some places, they are still
outnumbered, and in some cases the ratio is much more favorable to the
Northern Alliance. We think they're very serious about their business.
As I said, we're going to continue to resupply them right through the
winter. They will be the best supplied forces of the two that are in
conflict, and we think that they have every chance of prevailing.
MR. RUSSERT: If there are 60,000 Taliban and 15,000 Northern Alliance
troops, we're going to have to supplement the Northern Alliance with a
significant amount of American ground forces in order to win this war,
aren't we?
GEN. MYERS: One of the hard things to determine is how many Taliban
have been killed with either air strikes or with Northern Alliance
activity. And so every time you look at numbers of forces, you have to
put an approximate sign in front of those numbers, because it's very
difficult. We hear from time to time that the Taliban are defecting.
Defecting can be done in a couple of ways. One is they can actually
come over to the Northern Alliance, and they have done this way before
we started this war on terrorism in Afghanistan. They've been
defecting -- some of them will just go back to their homes and pick up
where they left off and stop fighting.
So it's a pretty fluid situation on the ground. I would just say that
we think the Northern Alliance is proceeding along in the campaign in
the pace that we thought they would.
MR. RUSSERT: There seems to have been a marked change in the tempo of
the war over the last two weeks. "The Weekly Standard," which is out
today, summarizes it this way: "Happy talk from military officials
about the Taliban being eviscerated turned to grudging admiration for
the Taliban's tenacity. The military boasted of achieving air
superiority over Afghanistan, but on the ground, the Taliban was
actually growing in numbers, swelled by new recruits from abroad. As
'The Washington Post' reported last week, senior administration
officials admit on background that they made a mistake and are now,
quote, 'giving wider latitude to the Defense Department to accelerate
U.S. battle plans.' The strategy now, according to one official, is
let's do what we need to do, let's get on with it and get it over
with."
Fair enough?
GEN. MYERS: No, not fair enough, a couple of comments on the Taliban
and on whether they're getting support. There've been reports that
volunteers are flowing in from Pakistan to Afghanistan. We can't
verify any of those numbers, and that's one of the difficulties we're
having, is how do you verify these claims one way or the other?
There is no administration, I don't think, from anybody on the
Taliban. One of the quotes was that we admired the Taliban. Absolutely
not. We do not admire them. We have not been surprised by their
tenacity. This war in Afghanistan's been going on, you know, for
several years, way before we started to engage, and to the notion that
somehow the U.S. military has been held back and not been able to
prosecute this conflict as we see fit, that is absolutely not true.
MR. RUSSERT: No political pressure?
GEN. MYERS: No political -- the only political pressure we've had is
the right political pressure. Obviously, this war is being executed by
General Tom Franks. He lives down in Tampa, Florida. He has briefed
the President on numerous occasions. We try to have Tom do that about
once a week. That's the President's request. The national security
council is present for that.
He's had the full support of the national security council from the
very beginning. As far as I know, he's gotten everything he wants to
prosecute this war at the pace that he wants to prosecute it. He is
probably the one that has the best knowledge of the situation on the
ground, the capability of the Northern Alliance, our capabilities, and
he's the one that's executing the war, and I -- these innuendoes and
other, more direct comments that, in fact, somehow the political side
of the house has held this war back are absolutely false.
MR. RUSSERT: Although your military briefers at the Pentagon have said
that they are surprised by the resilience of the Taliban, how tough
and what warriors they've been proven to be.
GEN. MYERS: Yes, I think surprised is an unfortunate word. That was
one briefer on one particular day. Who knows -- by the way, he's, as
John Newbold, two really great officers who know a lot about the war.
Surprised would not be the word I would use. We understood how this
was going -- I'll go back to my original comments, that we are on the
campaign plan that we set up, and we're going to proceed -
MR. RUSSERT: How would you rank the Taliban as an enemy?
GEN. MYERS: Oh, it's hard -- it's -- I mean, they're not like a
regular army. I would rate them as anybody that can have ruled
Afghanistan over the last several years, that has denied education to
women, that has killed women and children to further its aims, that
takes humanitarian assistance and takes it away from the
nongovernmental organizations that are trying to put that assistance
in there and sell it in the marketplace or says that the U.S. is
poisoning it, and maybe they'll poison it themselves, and that is
conducting the awful psychological warfare inputs that they were
massacring civilians.
I don't rate them very high, and I don't think -- I think when push
comes to shove that we're going to prevail here.
MR. RUSSERT: General Musharraf, the leader of Pakistan, is meeting
with Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld as we speak. He's reportedly going
to urge Secretary Rumsfeld to consider Ramadan, the Muslim holy
season, which begins next week, perhaps take a pause in the military
bombing campaign.
What's our response?
GEN. MYERS: Our response is that on September 11, the United States
and all, for that matter, all freedom-loving people were directly
attacked. They were attacked by al Qaeda and those who support them.
They chose that time. We didn't choose that time. So they chose the
time that this war was going to start, and so we're going to proceed
on this global war on terrorism, and I might just add we're very
focused on Afghanistan right now, and the world is, because that's
where you see most of the action. But this war is much broader than
that; it is much wider than that. Lots of things going on in
diplomatic circles, lots going on in financial circles, lots going on
in criminal investigative circles, lots of planning going on in other
parts of the world to interrupt these terrorist networks.
But they're the ones, to go back to your original questions or
question, they are the ones who set the date. So we're prepared to
fight this war on terrorism. We'll be sensitive, as we have been. The
Taliban like to park their air defense assets and some of their more
precious assets in their mosques and so forth, and we're not
-- we're not going to hit those. They know that. They'll use women and
children and residential areas as shields for their military
equipment. We know that, and we're not going to hit that, but we're
going to prosecute this war right through the winter.
MR. RUSSERT: How concerned are you about the stability of General
Musharraf in Pakistan and how concerned are you about the safety of
the Pakistani nuclear arsenal?
GEN. MYERS: Those are really political questions, a little bit outside
my lane. I can just tell you this, that the United States government
is doing all it can do to support Pakistan, because they've supported
us in this conflict, this war on terrorism. They understand that we've
got to win this war, and of course we're concerned about those things.
And other than that, I'll just -- I'll say that's a question probably
for somebody else.
MR. RUSSERT: You mentioned the war on terrorism. Do we have the
capability to eliminate Saddam Hussein's nuclear and biological
threat, if we decide to do that?
GEN. MYERS: Well, without getting into specific capabilities, that's
exactly what we're worried about in the war on terrorism are weapons
of mass destruction and those who have them and the fact they might
fall in the hands of international terrorist organizations. So anybody
that is harboring terrorists, anybody that has weapons of mass
destruction -- or mass destruction capability production capability,
we're very much worried about.
MR. RUSSERT: And we're capable to eliminate Saddam's threat, if we
choose to do so?
GEN. MYERS: I don't want to speculate on that. I think there's a lot
of planning going on right now. That is certainly the kind of threat
that we're looking and taking very seriously. You know, I think on
September 11 it was quite clear that the terrorists passed over
whatever threshold we thought there was for the use of weapons of mass
destruction when they killed over 5,000 people from 80 different
countries -- again, every culture and ethnic group you can think of.
They passed over that threshold, and so I think we have to do all we
can to ensure that these weapons of mass destruction don't fall into
the wrong hands or any hands, for that matter.
So if it comes to that, we'll be able to take them out.
MR. RUSSERT: Are you confident, as you sit here this morning that you
can say to the American people you will destroy al Qaeda and Osama bin
Laden?
GEN. MYERS: I am very confident that we're going to win. As the
President has said, as the Secretary of Defense has said, we know this
conflict is going to take a long time, and we're prepared for that. We
are steeled to that. We are resolute. When I talk to our soldiers and
our sailors, our airmen and Marines, the coast guardsmen, we're
settling in for the long haul. We know this is going to be painful in
terms of family separations. We are ready for this. I'll go back to
your earlier comment. This is the most important assignment we've had
in the military since World War II, in my mind, and that's not to
denigrate other great warriors in the Korean War and in Vietnam, where
I fought, or otherwise, but I think we've never had such a direct
attack on the United States or an attack on freedom around the world.
And so we will win. It will take some time. We know that. But in the
end, we will have destroyed and degraded international terrorism to
the point where it cannot impact us like it did on September 11.
MR. RUSSERT: Are the American people prepared for significant
casualties, if need be?
GEN. MYERS: I think they are. Obviously, we're going to do our best to
minimize any casualties on our side. We also know this is not going to
be a casualty free operation. We are steeled to that, as well. Our
families are steeled to that. You'll be so proud of our armed forces
men and women. They understand exactly what they have to do. We have
an all-volunteer force. When they raise their right hand and say they
swear to defend the Constitution of the United States against all
enemies foreign and domestic -- and there's more to it -- but they
know exactly what they're saying. They're saying we're prepared to
give our lives in defense of our Constitution and what we hold dear.
Not only that, but we have lots of coalition partners that are equally
resolute in their approach to this problem, so the American people
should make no doubt about it. We're going to do whatever it takes to
rid this world of this threat of terrorism.
MR. RUSSERT: It is now the stated policy of the U.S. government that
if a commercial airliner is hijacked, if need be, U.S. fighter jets
would take it down before allowing it to destroy one of our national
institutions. As someone in the chain of command, that would have to
be one of the most difficult decisions you'd ever have to make.
GEN. MYERS: It'd be a very, very difficult decision, obviously, and
it's one that you think about very, very hard.
Just to correct one thing -- I'm really not in the chain of command.
I'm the military adviser. The chain of command runs directly from the
President to the Secretary to the combatant commanders. In this case,
in that situation, it would either be Admiral Blair out in the Pacific
or, for the Hawaiian Islands and some of our territories out there, or
it would be General Eberhart at NORAD headquarters in Colorado
Springs, Colorado, but -- obviously.
But we have well-trained, disciplined, professional forces. The last
thing that any of our pilots want to do is shoot at an American
airliner. If it were going to be used, though, as an enemy missile,
then they're prepared to do that.
MR. RUSSERT: Yesterday, Osama bin Laden released yet another tape,
saying this is a war against Islam, saying that the attacks on the
Pentagon and the World Trade Center, the terrorists excelled in those.
What would you say to Osama bin Laden this morning?
GEN. MYERS: As I read his remarks -- and I've just read some excerpts
from his remarks -- it seemed to me he took on the world. He
criticized the U.N., he criticized the United States. Of course, he
criticized Arab governments, as well. So he's taking on everybody. I
would say they're the comments of somebody that is quite sick
mentally, and that -- that in the end, he is trying to use Islam as
his shield, and we know this is not a war on Islam or Muslims. This is
a war against terrorism. He is a terrorist. And so I would say you'd
better move frequently, because we're on -- we're going to be on your
tail.
MR. RUSSERT: His days are numbered?
GEN. MYERS: Well, I don't know for sure. We sure hope they are.
MR. RUSSERT: General Richard Myers, we thank you very much for joining
us this morning, and good luck with your troops.
GEN. MYERS: Thank you, Tim.
(end transcript)
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