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22 September 2002

Rumsfeld Stresses Iraqi Disarmament, Not Inspections

(Interview with Sunday Times London September 21) (4270)
The goal in Iraq is not inspections, but disarmament, Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld said in an interview with The Sunday Times
London September 21.
Rumsfeld acknowledged that inspections "have a place in this world,"
when a country seeks outside validation that they have taken certain
steps, but stressed that such inspections require "a cooperative
government" to be effective.
Rumsfeld did not characterize Saddam Hussein's regime as either
"cooperative" or "uncooperative," but noted that Iraq has "a history
of leaning back and being uncooperative until at some moment they
think it's to their advantage to lean forward."
The Defense Secretary stressed that the United States is not acting
unilaterally with respect to Iraq.
"We have any number of countries who have agreed to cooperate with
respect to Iraq," he said.
Rumsfeld said that the world community has tried to use many means to
persuade Saddam Hussein to adhere to U.N. resolutions concerning
weapons of mass destruction.
"We've tried to do it with economic sanctions. We've tried to do it
with military force in the Gulf War and more recently the wonderful
pilots and crews of planes from England and the United States are
doing it every day flying in the northern and southern no-fly zones
and getting shot at regularly and risking their lives," he said.
"There have been a lot of attempts to persuade that country to adhere
to the U.N. resolutions, which they agreed to and to the agreements
they made at the end of the Gulf War, which they have not, not in any
respect have they."
Rumsfeld outlined some of the concerns the United States has with
Saddam Hussein's regime.
In Iraq "you have a dictator who has confessed to the U.N. that he had
weapons of mass destruction, chemical biological and nuclear programs,
he has used those weapons against his neighbors and against his own
people," he said.
Rumsfeld added that Saddam Hussein "is currently paying $20,000 or
$25,000 to families, or at least saying he is, to families of suicide
bombers," and "has been on the terrorist state list for many years."
Saddam Hussein "has relationships with terrorists networks and there
are al Qaeda currently in the country so he is a classic example of
the nexus between a terrorist state and well advanced weapons of mass
destruction programs and relationships with terrorists," he said.
Following is a transcript of the interview, as released by the
Department of Defense:
(begin transcript)
Secretary Rumsfeld Interview with The Sunday Times London
(Interview with Tony Allen-Mills, The Sunday Times London)
Q: Perhaps I can begin with an obvious question. The senior members of
the administration have expressed public doubt that weapons
inspections are going to make very much difference in terms of
reducing the threat in Iraq. Does that mean that war is effectively
inevitable at this point?
Rumsfeld: No. I think it means exactly what the president said at the
U.N. He was very clear. The goal is not inspections as such, the goal
is disarmament. And the history of inspections suggests that they have
a place in this world and that place is when a country has decided
they want to disarm or they want to do whatever it is they have agreed
to do and they are anxious to have inspectors come in so that this can
be validated for the world community so you have a cooperative
government in a country that is requesting inspections so that they
can demonstrate and regain the support of the world community by
showing that they've adhered to whatever stipulations they have
undertaken. The history also suggests that, absent a cooperative
government, inspections don't work.
Countries are big, denial and deception is today relatively easy.
Things can be so widely dispersed that they involve hundreds of
locations as opposed to one or two. They can be put underground.
Denial and deception is, in a country like Iraq, in a very advanced
sophisticated stage. So I think the real question is not inspections
are not but it is how does one achieve disarmament. And if someone is
arguing inspections than the case has to be made that the government
of Iraq is a cooperative government and they would have to review the
past 11 years and come to that conclusion one would think.
Q: Do you regard Iraq as a cooperative government at this point?
Rumsfeld: Well, of course it's not for me to make those decisions. The
Congress will and the United Nations and the international community
and the President of the United States. Certainly reasonable people
looking at the past period of years would I think have trouble coming
to that conclusion.
Q: At the beginning of this week Saddam said that he would accept
unconditional arms inspections then he or some of his officials said
perhaps there might be restrictions and I gather in the last few hours
he is saying, well, maybe it's not unconditional at all but it should
to do with previous resolutions not any new resolution. It seems a
familiar pattern of response from Saddam. How do you deal with that?
At what point does that become insupportable?
Rumsfeld: Well, fortunately, I don't have to deal with it. That falls
[in] Colin Powell's area. And he will be working with his colleagues
in the United Nations and coming to conclusions about that. You're
quite right the way you phrased your question that that is a
relatively familiar pattern with Iraq that they have a history of
leaning back and being uncooperative until at some moment they think
it's to their advantage to lean forward but never very far forward and
always prepared to lean back and that has been the practice.
Q: Are you now or is the administration now in a position where it is
committed to a process of allowing the weapons inspections to unfold
over a period of time which some inspectors say may take as long as a
year to have any real idea of what exists in Iraq or could there come
a point at which you would just seek to interrupt that process on the
grounds that it was getting nowhere?
Rumsfeld: These really are questions that have to go to the president
and they have to go to those that are going to make judgments about
balancing the threat that is seen against the risks that the threat
poses against the risks of conflict and the use of force, and each has
its disadvantages. Each has its advantages as well. But I can't speak
for president and I don't know what he will conclude.
Q: One of the options is the use of force and the president has
unveiled yesterday his strategy or the doctrine of preemptive strikes
and it's reported in the New York time this morning that president has
received a detailed military plan. Firstly, can you confirm that the
Pentagon has presented a military option to the president?
Rumsfeld: I just simply don't talk about those types of things and I
must say it floors me that people think that it's desirable to talk
about those types of things and to run around printing things that
second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, 15th level people seem compelled
to put out. It's obviously people's lives are at risk. Now, that's a
specific comment. A general comment is that the tasks of defense
ministries in our country and yours and most countries is to think
through various types of contingencies that can occur that can be
difficult for our country and develop plans and programs and
approaches as to how would one deal with.
For example, today there is conflict in the Ivory Coast and so one
would ask, well, has the United States thought about the possibility
of a noncombatant evacuation from a country that's having a civil war
of some sort. And the answer is, sure. We sit down and think through
things that conceivably could happen that would be adverse to the
interests of the American people and of ours friends and our allies
and our deployed forces and we develop approaches as to how those
things might be dealt with. To fail to do so in a defense ministry
would be irresponsible.
Q: In his address to the United Nations the president set out very
clear and compelling case for a regime change in Iraq. Do you feel
that by turning to the weapons inspectors as a means of achieving
disarmament that America has somehow lost the initiative in terms of
regime change because weapons inspectors presumably they are not going
to effect a regime change?
Rumsfeld: Well, I don't know that the United States has turned to
inspectors. In other words, I'm not sure that I agree with the premise
in your question.
Q: My question is really has the United States lost the initiative in
the sense of setting the agenda because the United Nations is now
attempting to set the agenda for weapons inspections?
Rumsfeld: Well, let me see if I can separate a couple things. One is
that the Congress of the United States some years back passed
legislation called I believe the Iraqi Liberation Act.
Staff: '98.
Rumsfeld: In 1998. I think that that word "liberation" is the single
most appropriate word in a system that's dictatorial, repressive,
vicious, that the people of Iraq, I am confident -- indeed I know a
good deal about it -- would in fact feel liberated were that regime
not there. So if you begin with that as the statutory policy of the
United States government, then you go to the subject of the
president's speech, which talked about the threat of weapons of mass
destruction and that then leads one to the U.N. resolutions. So the
U.N. is addressing the fact that repeated U.N. resolutions have been
ignored and rejected by the Iraqi regime over a period in excess of a
decade. One of those resolutions at least involved the agreement on
their part to disarm and to allow inspectors to come in and
participate in that process of disarming. The talk that's taking
place, and as I say it's not clear to me it's by the United States but
it's clearly taking place up in the United Nations, about inspectors
is not surprising because they had had inspectors in there previously
and the inspectors had been thrown out.
But one would think that the United Nations and other countries in the
world will have to face a very tough question and that question is if
the goal is disarmament, and if disarmament requires the cooperation
of the government, and if inspectors' purpose is not to cause
disarmament but to validate the fact that disarmament has in fact
taken place, and it requires a cooperative government to do that, then
people are going to have to face up to an issue and that's that issue
as to whether or not they judge the Iraqi government to be a
compliant, cooperative host for inspectors and that's something that
every parliamentarian and every head of state and the populations of
our respective countries have to ask themselves and balance the risk
of being wrong against the advantages of the hope that one would be
cooperative.
Q: Is the United States working in coordination with the United
Nations on this or does the States have its own policy that it will
pursue irrespective of what may or may not happen with the United
Nations?
Rumsfeld: My impression is that president would not have gone to the
United Nations and spoken had he not believed in his heart that that
was the right thing to do, that we have many friends in that body who
share the same concerns about the situation in Iraq and that he is
anxious to have the Security Council members for sure but the other
countries in the United Nations work in a cooperative fashion to try
to find a solution to this.
Q: One issue that is raised often in Europe and elsewhere and I
believe this week by the Russian defense minister concerns the
evidence the new evidence concerning the Iraqi weapons of mass
destruction program. Do you believe that there's any obligation on the
United States to produce new evidence to justify its allegation that
Saddam poses a threat?
Rumsfeld: Well, of course this is not a court of law where one would
go into the court of law with evidence that could prove something
beyond a reasonable doubt, in other words someone is murdered. You
have to find a gun or you have to find a motive or you have to find
witnesses and that and that type of thing and the reason for that is
because that is a law enforcement activity, it is a matter of
punishing someone for violating the norms of the society. What we're
dealing with here is something quite different. If we wanted to wait
for the smoking gun, needless to say it would be a little late, you
would have already experienced an attack using a weapon of mass
destruction and instead of several thousand people you're running the
risk of tens of people being killed. So those who say where is the
smoking gun or where is the hard conclusive evidence that is possible
to achieve after a crime or after an event of that type, even then
it's difficult.
Think of all the books that have been written about why England slept
and about Pearl Harbor, what happened. Even now there's a couple of
books out about why weren't the dots connected before September
occurred and we lost 3,000 people, what was there about the
intelligence that we should have conceived, someone should have
conceivably known and connected the dots to have prevented that
activity. What the evidence that exists today is substantial, but it
is vastly more difficult to connect the dots before something happens
than it is after it happens.
But if one thinks about it, [the] president laid out the case, I laid
out the case for the Congress earlier this week, you have a dictator
who has confessed to the U.N. that he had weapons of mass destruction,
chemical biological and nuclear programs, he has used those weapons
against his neighbors and against his own people, he is currently
paying $20,000 or $25,000 to families, or at least saying he is, to
families of suicide bombers, he has been on the terrorist state list
for many years. He has relationships with terrorists networks and
there are al Qaeda currently in the country so he is a classic example
of the nexus between a terrorist state and well advanced weapons of
mass destruction programs and relationships with terrorists. And the
old question about well, isn't he deterrable? Aren't there other ways
to, as we did with the Soviet Union during the Cold War for so many
years, persuade a country, particularly a country with a state, with
an address, as oppose it had a terrorist network or individual
terrorist, can't you persuade them that it's not in their interest to
do something? Well, the world community has tried to do that
diplomatically. We've tried to do it with economic sanctions. We've
tried to do it with military force in the Gulf War and more recently
the wonderful pilots and crews of planes from England and the United
States are doing it every day flying in the northern and southern
no-fly zones and getting shot at regularly and risking their lives. So
there have been a lot of attempts to persuade that country to adhere
to the U.N. resolutions, which they agreed to and to the agreements
they made at the end of the Gulf War, which they have not, not in any
respect have they.
Q: Can I turn now to al Qaeda and the arrest this weekend in Pakistan
of Ramzi bin al-Shaibah, who has openly boasted of his role in
September the 11th. In your view is he a prime candidate for a
military tribunal, and, basically, do you think the death penalty
should be applied to someone like him?
Rumsfeld: The question about whether -- I believe they are not called
military tribunals in the United States, they're called military
commissions under the military order that the president signed. One
wouldn't know that from reading the press --
Q: Sorry.
Rumsfeld: but almost everybody uses the other phrase. I don't know
why. Maybe it's more gripping.
Q: Well, there hasn't been one yet?
Rumsfeld: That's true. That's true. And the answer to that is I simply
don't know. That's a judgment that the president would make. He is the
individual who would or would not assign somebody to be considered for
a military commission and he has not yet done that.
Q: Has to your knowledge this character been cooperating with
interrogators, American interrogators?
Rumsfeld: I don't get into the question as to whether or not people
that are being detained in this country or other countries are saying
anything. I just don't talk about what they are doing or not doing.
Q: The broader question concerns the prisoners that are being held in
Guantanomo Bay and some of them are British citizens. I think in fact
the last time I spoke to you in March it wasn't clear how these
prisoners would be dealt with, when they would be brought to any kind
of legal proceeding. Is there yet a plan? Do you know what you are
going to do with them or is this something that's simply indefinite?
Rumsfeld: Well, that issue is something that the interagency process
in our government addresses from time to time. We know thus far that
the decisions have been that these clearly unlawful combatants, they
are being held in for the most part in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, they are
being treated humanely, they are being well fed and provided excellent
medical attention. Countries that want to see nationals from their
countries have the opportunity to interview them for law enforcement
purposes and a great many countries, including yours, have visited
Guantanamo Bay. The international committee for the Red Cross is there
all the time, observing what's taking place. The reason they are there
is because they were fighting in a war and were captured and it was
decided that they were people who were determined to kill and
terrorize other people, innocent men, women and children. And that
they would be better off, and that the world would be better off, if
they were off the street and not able to go right back and kill more
people.
Our purpose, however, is not to punish them or to engage in law
enforcement actions per se at the present time. What we're dealing
with here is something that's quite new for us, it's quite old for
some other countries that have dealt with terrorist problems but what
we've decide was the single most important thing was it get them off
the street, off the battlefield and, second, to interrogate them and
begin to patch together that information so that we can prevent other
terrorists acts from happening. And that is exactly what has been
taking place. It has been taking place in our country. It has been
taking place in dozens and dozens and dozens of countries all across
the globe. We have a coalition in the global war on terrorism of over
90 countries, something like half of all the nations in the world. It
is without question the largest coalition in human history. And those
countries are arresting people every day. And all of that information
that is being shared and the result of that sharing of intelligence
information has been to save a great many lives.
There have been any number of terrorists acts that is have been
stopped that did not happen, people who were not killed because of
this process of intelligence gathering and interrogation that's taking
place in Afghanistan, in Pakistan, in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and all
across the globe, including your country. Goodness knows there has
been no country from the world who has been as forthright and helpful
as Prime Minister Blair and his government in cooperating in the
global war on terrorism from day one.
Q: The point has been repeatedly made in various countries that that
cooperation is potentially jeopardized if the United States goes it
alone on Iraq. Even in Britain there is a strong undercurrent of doubt
that an attack on Iraq is currently justified by the evidence that's
been presented so far. What is most important to the United States,
that it defend itself in the manner that it sees fit or that it
preserves these international alliances that is it has very
painstakingly built?
Rumsfeld: I find it fascinating to listen to the loose language that
politicians and the media use, "go it alone". That is precisely what
you said is what you hear and read all over the world. The global war
on terrorism has 90 countries participating. Does that sound
unilateralist? Not to me. Not to you, I'm sure. It's a breathtakingly
broad and deep coalition. It is a current, modern, visible
manifestation of the fact that the United States recognizes the value
of cooperating with other countries and yet it has become so
fashionable, particularly in Europe, to want to stick a stick in
people's eye and say call it unilateralist. It's utter nonsense. With
respect to your question, my assumption is that sovereign states act
for good and valid reasons that they believe are in their interest.
The global war on terrorism exists. It will be a long one. A lot of
people on the globe are vulnerable to terrorist acts. To suggest that
if any one of the sovereign nations of the 90 in the global war on
terrorism did something that one or another of the other 90 nations
didn't agree with that they would then penalize themselves by not
cooperating in the global war on terror and shoot themselves on the
foot, if you will as a figure of speech -
-- I don't know if you use that in England but...
Q: Yes, we do.
Rumsfeld: ...we do in Chicago -- would be mindless. The allegation on
its face is ridiculous. Second, it seems that at the moment just as it
was fashionable at the beginning of the global war on terrorism to
suggest that the United States was unilateralist, it's fashionable
today with respect to Iraq. Now, the fact of the matter is it's false.
We have any number of countries who have agreed to cooperate with
respect to Iraq. So, the "go-it- alone" is more a statement by a
person in a single country who personally, as opposed to their
country, may or may not agree with what the media is saying the
president is thinking. How is that? Is that sufficiently clear and
direct?
They read something in the press and say oh my goodness, isn't that
terrible, the president is not going to go to Congress and ask for
their help, the president is not going to go to the United Nations and
ask for their help, president is going to, quote, "go it alone". The
United States Government has been talking to dozens and dozens and
dozens and dozens of countries all over the world and any number have
agreed to help in one way or another. And any number have said they
would prefer that this happened or prefer that that happen or if this
doesn't happen they may not be able to help in that way but they could
help this some other way. So to prejudge the outcome of, at the very
beginning of that process -- as president said when he spoke to the
United Nations, this is the first step -- to prejudge it negatively,
about him and about the United States, and then repeat it mindlessly
day after day after day is unimpressive.
Q: I gather that you did many years ago once encounter Saddam Hussein
during a visit to Iraq. I'm just wondering if you have any particular
recollections of that meeting.
Rumsfeld: Vivid.
Q: How was he?
Rumsfeld: He is a survivor. He took over by the use of force. He
maintains his position by the use of force, vicious force. It is
clearly kind of one of the last Cold War, authoritarian regimes. The
damage that he has done to the people of that country who are
intelligent and like most people one would think freedom loving but
been denied that freedom, the number of expatriates around the world
who have gone on to do wonderful things and talented things is a
reflection of the energy and the vitality of those people. But if you
read what the international organizations that look at human rights,
I'm just floored at all of the people in the world who normally would
be concerned about human rights who when it comes to Saddam Hussein
turn a blind eye, seem not to be concerned about what he has done to
those human beings. It is a tragic, terrible story. And yet people who
one would think would be concerned seem not concerned, selective.
Q: Thank you very much indeed.
Rumsfeld: Thank you.
(end transcript)
(Distributed by the Office of International Information Programs, U.S.
Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)