03 February 2002
Transcript: Rumsfeld Cites Nexus of Terror and Weapons of Mass Destruction
(Potential links between terrorists and such weapons are global
danger) (3,350)
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said that potential acquisition
of weapons of mass destruction by terrorist groups constitutes the
chief security threat facing the United States and the world today.
Speaking on the ABC television program "This Week," Rumsfeld pointed
out that North Korea, Iraq, and Iran -- the three nations cited by
President Bush as part of an "axis of evil" -- are each engaged in
programs to develop weapons of mass destruction, and each has
relationships with terrorist networks.
"It's that nexus between weapons of mass destruction and terrorist
networks that the President was citing," Secretary Rumsfeld said.
North Korea, Rumsfeld pointed out, is not just developing ballistic
missiles, "they're selling weapons of mass destruction and ballistic
missiles around the globe to anyone who wants to buy them."
In the case of Iran, Rumsfeld said that the United States has reports
that al-Qaeda members have been allowed to travel through the country,
and that Iran has been supplying arms to various elements inside
Afghanistan.
Rumsfeld noted that, while the United States is increasing its defense
budget significantly, it is still considerably less than it was during
the Cold War as a percentage of the nation's economy.
More generally, Secretary Rumsfeld said that the world is living in a
different time. "We have to think about this problem in a dramatically
different way than we did previously."
Following is a transcript of the Rumsfeld interview:
(begin transcript)
United States Department of Defense
NEWS TRANSCRIPT
February 3, 2002
Secretary Rumsfeld Interview
ABC This Week
(Interview with Sam Donaldson, ABC This Week)
QUESTION: Joining us now is the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld.
Welcome, Mr. Secretary.
RUMSFELD: Thank you.
QUESTION: Well, what is the United States doing to try to find Daniel
Pearl?
RUMSFELD: Well, first, let me say that it's my understanding that the
various agencies of the United States government are actively trying
to be helpful. And certainly, everyone prays for his safety and his
release. The Department of State is involved, the Department of
Justice is involved. The Department of Defense is not an agency that
is involved. But, needless to say, we're watching it carefully.
QUESTION: Do you have any information as to how close authorities, no
matter whether they're our people or the Pakistanis, are to finding
Pearl?
RUMSFELD: I don't. I know that the Pakistani government is being very
cooperative and is doing what they can do.
QUESTION: The kidnappers in one of their e-mails demanded the release
of prisoners from Guantanamo, and made other demands -- release the
F-16s that at one time Pakistan purchased and we withheld. Are we
going to do that?
RUMSFELD: Well, I think Secretary Colin Powell stated the policy of
our government very well when he pointed out that in cases like this,
the people who take hostages and kidnap people and threaten their
lives make a whole host of claims that the United States, really, it's
not possible to meet. And what we have to do is do exactly what our
agencies are doing and that's do everything we can to help find them.
And hope that the kidnappers will find that having him alive and being
able to get publicity and make claims will be satisfactory to them
during the period when these investigations are underway.
QUESTION: One more question -- just why isn't it possible for us to
meet them? Ronald Reagan sold arms to Iran for the release of hostages
in Lebanon. The Israelis often have traded people in their jails for
Israeli soldiers. Why can't we negotiate?
RUMSFELD: The situation that is generally described in answer to that
question, I think, is apt. And it is that, to the extent you do it,
you create an incentive for people to take hostages. And the
inevitable result of it is that it will become a major business to go
out around the world and kidnap Americans and hold them for a ransom.
It's been done in Colombia any number of times in the last year and a
half. It's been done in the Philippines. There are hostages taken
every day. It has become a rather sizeable business in the world,
where people can fund, then, their terrorist activities or their other
criminal activities. And it's not a good thing for countries to decide
that they want to encourage people to create a business out of killing
and taken hostages of Americans.
QUESTION: So even if it means the life of an American?
RUMSFELD: The policy of the United States government, I think
Secretary Powell described perfectly.
QUESTION: Let's move on, back in fact, to the president's speech last
Tuesday night. He singled out Iran, Iraq and North Korea, calling them
an "axis of evil." And then he said something I think that is as tough
as we've ever heard a president in modern times say, actually without
going to war. Here it was:
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: I will not wait on events while dangers
gather. I will not stand by as peril draws closer and closer. The
United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous
regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons.
[Cheers and applause]
QUESTION: "I will not wait. I will not stand by. The United States
will not permit." At what point, if these three countries continue to
try to acquire weapons of mass destruction, will the United States
make good on that promise?
RUMSFELD: Well, first, I think the applause that followed the
president's remarks is an indication that there is a growing
realization, a broad realization today that we are living in a
different time. With weapons of mass destruction more readily
available to a number of nations and potentially to terrorist
networks. We have to think about this problem in a dramatically
different way than we did previously.
And the president's point, I think, was sound. And I've been
impressed, looking at comments around the world and comments in the
United States and in the Congress in support of the president's
statement, that in fact these three countries have engaged in
activities with respect to their own people, as well as their
neighbors, that have to be described as "evil." And that we do know of
certain knowledge that each of those three countries is engaged in
active weapons of mass destruction programs. And we do know that those
countries have relationships with terrorist networks.
It's that nexus between weapons of mass destruction and terrorist
networks that the president was citing as being different for today
and something that we really have to think very carefully about what
we do as a people, and as a world, and as a society, given that nexus.
QUESTION: When do we do it? If they continue to try to acquire the
weapons, do we do it in the middle of their effort to acquire? Do we
wait till they have acquired? Do we wait until they're poised to use
them? I think Americans would certainly want the president or any
administration to prevent an enemy from using weapons of mass
destruction. But at what point does he say "I will not stand idly by?"
Where's the line?
RUMSFELD: Well, those are difficult calls and those are calls that
presidents make. And he will. He'll make his own judgment. And he will
watch and take the appropriate steps to provide for the protection of
the American people and our deployed forces, and our friends and
allies.
QUESTION: You know, there's lots of controversy, perhaps, over North
Korea. South Korea has this "sunshine" policy, this effort at
rapprochement with North Korea, and people say the president has
undercut that.
RUMSFELD: Oh, I don't think so, at all. The South Korean government
does have a policy, a so-called "sunshine policy" where they've been
making a good deal of effort over a period of years now to try to get
the vicious, repressive, dictatorial government of North Korea to
behave rationally. And to come into the world. And they won't. They're
starving their people. They're engaged in their own weapons of mass
destruction development and ballistic missile development. And at the
same time, they're selling weapons of mass destruction and ballistic
missiles around the globe to anyone who wants to buy them.
The "sunshine" policy is certainly a reasonable effort on the part of
the South Korean government, and to the extent it works at some point,
that would be a wonderful thing.
QUESTION: The president didn't cut that off -
RUMSFELD: Oh, not at all.
QUESTION: -- with his very harsh talk about North Korea?
RUMSFELD: Oh, I don't think so. I think he may have helped it.
QUESTION: All right. There's a report, by the way, that Iran may have
helped the al-Qaeda escape Afghanistan. Can you confirm that?
RUMSFELD: I can.
QUESTION: You can?
RUMSFELD: Yes. There isn't any doubt in my mind but that the porous
border between Iran and Afghanistan has been used for al-Qaeda and
Taliban to move into Iran and find refuge and that the Iranians have
not done what the Pakistan government has done -- put troops along the
border and prevent terrorists from escaping out of Afghanistan into
their country. The Pakistan government has done a terrific job of
helping. And nonetheless, with those big, long, porous borders, I'm
sure al-Qaeda and Taliban have moved across there, as well. But we
have any number of reports that Iran has been permissive and allowed
transit through their country of al-Qaeda. We have any number of
reports, more recently, that they have been supplying arms in
Afghanistan to various elements in the country.
QUESTION: Is there anything we're going to do to stop that, to seal
that border?
RUMSFELD: Well, Sam, you know we don't announce things we're going to
do before we do them.
QUESTION: Okay.
RUMSFELD: And the president makes those judgments, not secretaries of
defense.
QUESTION: Well, you made a judgment the other day which you expressed
and I think you scared a lot of people. Let me just take a look at
some of your words and see what you meant. "As they gain access to
weapons of increasing power, and let there be no doubt but that they
are, these attacks will grow vastly more deadly than those we suffered
several months ago." Attacks on the United States. How do you know
this?
RUMSFELD: Well, anyone who looks at the techniques of taking American
airliners filled with Americans and taking box openers and capturing
crews and turning those airplanes into missiles and driving them into
buildings and killing thousands of people, we know roughly the effect
of that. It was thousands. We also know that biological weapons, for
example, or nuclear weapons, or radiation weapons, or chemical weapons
can kill tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands, not simply
thousands.
QUESTION: But you seem to be predicting not that it's possible, but
that it's going to happen.
RUMSFELD: No, no. I'm -- what I'm saying, very directly, is that we
have a series of countries on the terrorist list. Any number of them
are active, developing weapons of mass destruction, and that they have
relations with terrorist networks. And we must not sit idly by as a
country, as a world, and accept that outcome, that eventually, if we
wait long enough, eventually it's reasonable to expect that terrorist
nations will provide weapons of mass destruction to terrorist
networks. We know the al-Qaeda were actively seeking chemical and
biological weapons. There's evidence galore to that effect. We have to
face that. It isn't a matter of scaring anybody, it's exactly what
President Bush said. We need to consider the world we're living in and
live with a sense of heightened awareness. And we can live in this
world. We can do that.
QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, I understand and take your point. Some
cynics, of course, believe when you were saying that, you were tying
it to the increase in the defense budget, that you and the president -
RUMSFELD: Oh, nonsense! No.
QUESTION: I understand. These people in Washington, they say the
darndest things!
RUMSFELD: (Laughs) There's the understatement!
QUESTION: Let me just say that you were requesting, and the president,
a 48-billion-dollar increase in the defense budget for the next fiscal
year and over a five-year period up to 451 billion dollars, that's
where it would be. That's a 120-billion-dollar increase. Now, the old
question of guns versus butter then arises.
Let me just show you a chart of some of the cuts we understand the
president is asking in domestic programs: Nine billion dollars cut in
highway programs; a freeze in the Army Corps of Engineers projects; a
cut of 180 million from a youth job program. Perhaps a cut of an
addition 620 million in state grants for training and education. And
the critics will say "all to pay for the expanded defense budget."
RUMSFELD: The reality is that the United States is now spending about
three percent of our gross national product on defense. Back in the
Kennedy and Eisenhower period, it was closer to 10 percent. In the
Ford period, it was around five percent of our gross national product.
Today, it's about three percent. It is certainly a percentage that our
country can afford.
Second, if one thinks about it, we all got up today and went about our
business, people going to church, people going to the Super Bowl,
people coming in to meet with you -
QUESTION: And we appreciate it.
RUMSFELD: Thank you. And we did it because we can enjoy our freedom.
Because we live in a world that's underpinned by peace and stability,
for the most part. And it is our national security, the United States
of America, at this time in history, that is able to contribute to
peace and stability in the world. And without peace and stability, we
can't have prosperity, we can't be able to enjoy our freedoms, we
can't have economic opportunity. That's so central. You've been in war
zones. You've been to Beirut. You've been to Kabul. You know what they
look like. People are not on the streets. They're off the streets. The
buildings are pock-marked. Roads are blown up.
QUESTION: But isn't it a fact that the American people will have to be
told that in order to do the things that you argue we need to do are
going to have to give up a lot of the butter?
RUMSFELD: In President Truman's presidency, they made a decision
during the Korean War to moderate the growth in non-defense spending.
That's what President Bush has done. He's kept the growth in
non-defense spending to about one or two or three percent, which is a
very responsible thing to do. And he's said that the American people
need to have an increase in the defense budget and in the homeland
security budget.
QUESTION: All I'm suggesting, sir, is you may have to say "you can't
have it all" to the American people. Because at one time, President
Bush --
RUMSFELD: Well, the American people know that. They establish
priorities in their daily lives everyday. The American people aren't
unrealistic. I've got a lot of confidence in the American people. They
get up and they look at their budgets, they know that they can have
this, but not that. And that's the way it is for our country.
QUESTION: Let me get into this business of the prisoners of war. Have
you settled the issue that's being debated at the White House, I
understand, as to whether to actually have tribunals, to look at these
prisoners -- and they're not prisoners of war, everybody in your
administration agrees -- but somehow to settle their status?
RUMSFELD: I think that everyone has agreed that under the Geneva
Convention that the United States has been, is today, and will in the
future treat them -- will apply the Geneva Convention and see that
they have the appropriate rights under the Geneva Convention.
QUESTION: For humane treatment. But Secretary Powell argues that
perhaps you should have the military tribunal under Article 5, settle
their status, that's what Article 5 says, when in doubt, you're to
have a military tribunal.
RUMSFELD: Right. And we have -- a military tribunal, I think, under
the Article, sounds very formal. But it is not necessarily very
formal. It's a process, simply, to determine the question as to their
status.
QUESTION: Are you saying you've done that?
RUMSFELD: We have been doing that. That's the way we've been sorting
through people. Now, it also says that it need not be done unless
there's substantial doubt or a reasonable doubt.
QUESTION: Doubt.
RUMSFELD: Yeah. And in this case, I don't think anyone doubts that
al-Qaeda is a terrorist organization. The Geneva Convention was
designed for nations in conflict. What we have here is not a nation,
the al-Qaeda, it's a terrorist network.
QUESTION: Well, are you arguing your position, sir, or are you telling
us that this is now a settled matter?
RUMSFELD: I think the thing that's settled is the following: that
everyone agrees they are not prisoners of war. Everyone agrees that we
have been, are today, and will in the future apply the Geneva
Convention and see that they have the rights under the Convention, and
there is apparently a legal question that is still being considered in
the White House and will probably be resolved some time in the days
immediately ahead as to whether the Geneva Convention should be
applied as a matter of law, or a matter of policy.
We are treating them -- it really does not make a lot of difference.
The only change -- difference would be, would be a precedent. And a
lot of people are quite concerned that we don't do anything that would
blur the distinction between non-combatants and combatants. If you
think about it, the reason the Geneva Convention is there is because
we wanted to protect lawful combatants, soldiers.
QUESTION: Including our own if they are captured by the other side.
RUMSFELD: Exactly. And therefore, our soldiers don't go around killing
innocent people. Nor do our soldiers go around pretending they are
civilians and blurring that distinction between a combatant and a
non-combatant. That's what puts civilians at risk.
QUESTION: Well, you're examining right now the case of Hasam Quedam in
which it is said that our Special Forces went in and through a
horrible mistake killed 15-21 people who were not Taliban, but in fact
supporters of the new government.
RUMSFELD: Is that a question?
QUESTION: Yes, because you just said we don't go around killing
innocent people. I take your point -
RUMSFELD: Well, we don't.
QUESTION: -- except you've launched that investigation to see whether
we, in fact, did.
RUMSFELD: Of course, we do. We always launch an investigation. I don't
-- the commander and the command does. If there are legitimate
questions raised about some action, it's perfectly appropriate for
them to do exactly what they did and say "stop for a minute, we're
going to go take a look. We're going to see what actually happened."
Now, is it possible that everyone's accurate? That is to say, that in
that attack there might have been some people who were Taliban, there
might have been some people who were al-Qaeda, and there might have
also been some people that weren't? And in the same room. Because this
is Afghanistan.
QUESTION: Well, sir, we're out of time, but will you pledge that
whatever the investigation shows, you will release that information to
the American people and the world?
RUMSFELD: Why, of course.
QUESTION: All right. Thank you very much, Secretary Rumsfeld, for
being with us. I hope you'll come back.
RUMSFELD: Thank you.
(end transcript)
(Distributed by the Office of International Information Programs, U.S.
Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
|
NEWSLETTER
|
|
Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list
|
|
|
