[iwar] [fc:Secretary.Rumsfeld.Interview.with.Al.Jezeera]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2001-10-19 21:15:32
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Secretary Rumsfeld Interview with Al Jezeera

(Interview with Al Jezeera)

Q: I'll start in Arabic introducing you --

Secretary Rumsfeld, thank you very much for letting us, giving us this
opportunity.  Let me start first with the question that of course any
journalist in Washington would ask you about, how is your assessment and
evaluation of the military action so far?

Rumsfeld: I think of the actions as much broader than purely military. 
As you know, they're diplomatic, they're economic, as well as military,
and they're all important, because when one thinks of the thousands of
people who were killed here in the United States and who have been
killed in other countries by terrorists, it is a very broad-based
program that will be sustained over a period of time as we find ways to
see that the terrorists are not successful. 

Q: And for the military activities that of course your department is in
charge of?

Rumsfeld: Well, we feel that they're progressing in an orderly way, in a
measured way.  We've been, as everyone in the world is aware, we thought
through this very carefully, and we've taken our time, and we have been
very careful in selecting targets.  The goal, obviously, is to deal with
the al Qaeda terrorist network that exists in Afghanistan and the
Taliban that has been so important to harboring the al Qaeda network. 

Q: Previously and before the military actions, you talked about Taliban,
that there are good people in Taliban and bad people.  Do you still have
that view, or has it changed?

Rumsfeld: I think what I've said is the truth, and it is that this
effort is not against the Afghanistan people, it's not against any race
or any religion.  It is against terrorism and terrorists and the senior
people that are harboring terrorists. 

As we all know, there are any number of people in Afghanistan who don't
support the al Qaeda.  There are any number that don't support the
Taliban.  Indeed, there are people in Taliban that don't like haven't al
Qaeda in the country.  And our interest -- if you think about the damage
that's been done to the Afghan people, the number that are starving, the
number of people who have been dealt with so poorly by the Taliban
leadership and by al Qaeda, it seems to us that the important thing is
that we're in favor of those people who would like to see the terrorists
gone.  And I think there's a great many people in Afghanistan who feel
that way. 

Q: So you can still reach out to good people in the Taliban government,
not just Afghanistan, and you are willing to cooperate with them. 

Rumsfeld: And we are hopeful that those people, the Afghan people, the
people who are against al Qaeda and the people who are against the
leadership of Taliban will be successful in their efforts to stop the
terrorism and stop the people who have done so much damage in the world

Q: So are you only targeting the bad people in Taliban?

Rumsfeld: The effort by the coalition countries that are involved, and
there's dozens of nations involved as you know, has been to go after the
military targets, to go after the command and control capabilities of
Taliban and al Qaeda, to deal with the terrorist training camps, and to
be careful to avoid civilians and people who are not involved in the
terrorism. 

Q: However, some villages have been hit and presumably more than one
specific village, and people questioning whether the U.S.  really would
like to reach some people in these villages, and also to hit them
regardless of the civilian casualties. 

Rumsfeld: Well, of course it's just not true.  We care a great deal
about civilian casualties.  We have to.  Think of the thousands of
innocent Americans that were killed by the terrorists. 

What we have done is to exercise great care.  But the reality is when
there's that much ammunition and ordnance and munitions flying around in
a country, there will inevitably be some unintended casualties. 

If you think about it, it's true, the coalition aircraft are dropping
some bombs on military targets.  It is also true that there's a great
deal of anti-aircraft fire coming up from the ground by Taliban against
those aircraft.  That munition also kills people.  It kills people on
the ground when it comes back down. 

In addition, there's a war going on in Afghanistan, and has been for
many, many years.  So you have the various tribes and the opposition in
the north, the Northern Alliance, all shooting at each other. 

So it is very difficult to know in any instance exactly what may have
caused an unintended casualty. 

Q: So that could be from the Afghanis themselves who are against
Taliban?

Rumsfeld: Or it could be from the Taliban ground fire. 

Now there is one instance where we believe that a round of munitions
actually went amiss and did in fact kill possibly four people and
injured several people, for which we regret a great deal. 

Q: Is any other legality or consequences of compensation for those
people if the Pentagon is admitting officially that that was a mistake?

Rumsfeld: The thing to keep in mind is that the United States has been
the biggest donor of food for Afghanistan this year, well before the
terrorist attack on September 11th.  The United States gave over $137
million of food aid to Afghanistan.  President Bush has recently
announced a $320 million food aid program, which is quite apart from the
program where military aircraft are dropping food all across the country
and starving people are getting food.  My recollection is just in the
last period of days we have put out something like 265,000 rations of
meals of food into Afghanistan from the Pentagon alone. 

Q: Would you consider radio, like (inaudible) radio which is civilian
radio that was hit and the Pentagon declared that in the briefing with
reporters, a civilian or a military target?

Rumsfeld: Well, there's no question but that the several radio stations
and the television station in the country were controlled by Taliban. 
They certainly were not what anyone would characterize as free press or
free media.  They were propaganda vehicles for the Taliban leadership
and for the people that are harboring the terrorists and for the al
Qaeda. 

Q: So Voice of America controlled by the U.S.  government would be also
a target for Taliban if they had the chance to do it?

Rumsfeld: Think about it this way.  Voice of America is paid for by the
United States government, but it has an independence that it says what
it wishes to say and is not controlled by the Department of State. 

Q: So it depends on the message itself and then built on the content,
analysis of the message from the radio we could decide whether to hit it
or not, right?

Rumsfeld: Well, I guess everyone has to make their own decisions.  But
our decision was that the radio station and the television station in
fact were vehicles for the Taliban leadership and for al Qaeda to manage
their affairs and that therefore they were certainly appropriate
targets. 

Q: We're talking about military targets, and there is one of the
controversial issues, I believe, which is the most important issue about
the definition of terrorism.  This is something standing even between or
in the middle of cooperation between people and countries in the Arab
world and the U.S. 

Would we consider, I mean any military target in a fight or a war
between al Qaeda and the U.S.  a legitimate one if the al Qaeda people
would consider the Pentagon a military target? So would that considered
a terrorist act or an act of war from their side?

Rumsfeld: Terrorism, of course, has a lot of definitions and people have
different views as to what it means precisely.  For myself, I think of
the word as meaning an act whereby innocent people are involved and
killed. 

The purpose of terrorism is to terrorize people.  It's to alter their
behavior.  Therefore, I think of it as a situation where a group of
people decide that they want to terrorize a person and the way, or a
group of people, and the way --

Q: Or a country. 

Rumsfeld: Or a country.  And the way they do that is to attack innocent
people and kill them.  That, for me, is what terrorism is. 

Q: Because some of the argument that we hear from the other side,
regardless whether we agree or disagree with it, I personally disagree,
that okay, the World Trade Center is a very clear civilian target and
that should not be considered but a terrorist act, but the Pentagon is
the same way as the headquarter of Taliban that is being hit. 

What is your take on that?

Rumsfeld: I guess my take on it is that it's an irrelevant question. 
The reason I say that is that the Pentagon and the United States were
hurting no one with respect to the Taliban or al Qaeda.  And these
people decided that it was in their interest to go after a symbol of the
United States of America.  They began with the World Trade Center and
the Pentagon as illustrative of what they were trying to achieve. 

I think trying to put that into a legitimacy of a war or a non-war
target is a stretch. 

Q: In view of the cooperation that you're getting from U.S.  allies in
the Arab and Moslem world, how is it so far with Pakistan?

Rumsfeld: Well I think that the number of countries in the Moslem world,
Arab world and non-Arab Moslem world, has been overwhelming.  It's been
truly wonderful to see the response and the concern about these acts of
terrorism and the support and the unity and the cohesion that's been
achieved.  They all have announced, in the way they wish to announce,
their support and their involvement.  It varies from country to country,
to be sure.  And we understand that.  Every country has a somewhat
different perspective.  They have a different history.  They live in a
different neighborhood.  That, from my standpoint, and from the
standpoint of the United States is perfectly understandable, but it has
been truly wonderful support. 

Q: Has Saudi Arabia allowed you to use the command and control center in
Prince Sultan base?

Rumsfeld: You know, what I've decided to do, I think it's probably -- my
goal is to get the maximum amount of support from other countries and
other people, even people within countries as we're getting help from
people in Afghanistan right now.  And I think the way to get the maximum
support is to have each country describe for itself the extent to which
it is or is not involved in trying to deal with the problem of
terrorism.  And to the extent each country uses their own words and
their own phrases to characterizes it, I think it's probably more
appropriate, rather than for me trying to characterize how 100, 150
countries have managed their affairs. 

Q: But 100 percent satisfaction of, for example, if we start with Saudi
Arabia, is there or not from your own perspective?

Rumsfeld: I am delighted to have the help from every country in the
region that we're getting help from, and that's almost all of them.  And
we are fully sensitive to the fact that each country should do it in a
way that they feel good about, that they feel comfortable with, and they
feel fits their circumstance. 

Q: You have more than, or around 20,000 U.S.  soldiers now in Egypt for
the Pakistan maneuvers.  What are you going to do with them after they
finish?

Rumsfeld: I haven't ever gotten into the practice of describing the
future with people.  It seems to me that it's best not to describe
operations or intelligence matters so I just have a standard policy of
not speculating about the future. 

Q: The reason for my question is that they are being trained annually on
desert territory and not mountain territory as in Afghanistan, and
people talk about, or at least people in (unintelligible) your name is
mentioned many times, would like to enlarge the war on terrorism to
start immediately after Afghanistan with Iraq.  Is that a fair
assessment of the situation?

Rumsfeld: Well, it's obviously -- you can assess things any way you want
and so can others.  As I've said, I don't discuss what the United States
of America might or might not do in the future.  We do know a few things
about that.  We know the president of the United States is the one who
makes the decision, not the secretary of defense or others.  We also
know that the president has announced a determination to root out
terrorists where they are. 

The only way you can defend against terrorism is not by self-defense,
because a terrorist can attack any place at any time.  You simply must
take the battle to them, and that's what President Bush has announced
he's going to do, and that's what he is in the process of doing. 

Q: So in this case, Secretary Powell was right when he characterized
what your deputy, Dr.  Paul Wolfowitz said, that we are in the business
of ending regimes, that Mr.  Wolfowitz was speaking for himself?

Rumsfeld: First of all, Mr.  Wolfowitz did not mean to say that he was
in the business of ending regimes at all.  He was ending terrorists and
stopping terrorists from terrorizing the world, and it would be, it was
a misquotation on his part that he corrected at a later time. 

Secretary Powell and I and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz all support
President Bush's policies.  We're all very much in agreement. 

Q: So the ending regimes or ending terrorist regimes should not be on
the agenda? I mean only mainly on al Qaeda, or do we look for something
else past the Afghanistan walls?

Rumsfeld: Maybe I misinterpreted your question.  The statement that Dr. 
Wolfowitz was quoted on, it was something to the effect that he then
corrected. 

The president's position, which is my position and Secretary Powell's,
and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz's position, is that the United States is
going to, throughout the world, seek out terrorists and stop them from
terrorizing people.  And persuade countries that are harboring
terrorists and fostering and financing and facilitating their terrorist
activities, and stop them from doing that. 

Q: It is a perception in the Arab world among politicians that they look
as if there are two camps in this administration.  The doves and the
hawks.  You are supposed to be the chief of the hawks, or at least
perceived as so, and Secretary Powell as the symbol of the doves in the
administration. 

How far is that characterization in their mind if you are (inaudible)?

Rumsfeld: Of course it's not a useful way to think of it at all.  I work
with Colin Powell every day.  We have views that are very similar on
most things.  We differ from time to time, but then I differ from time
to time with my wife on various issues, so that doesn't mean much. 

Q: It's a compliment. 

Rumsfeld: He's a very good friend, and we find ourselves in agreement
almost all the time. 

I don't know, there's something about the press that they like to get up
in the morning and create conflict between people.  It's apparently a
lot easier for people in the media to write about personalities than it
is about concepts and strategies and direction. 

If you personalize a thing into good guys and bad guys, it's an easier
story, I suppose, for a journalist, but it's not terribly useful. 

I've been kind of amused by it all from time to time, and my wife and
children know I'm basically a nice person. 

Q: They are sure about that. 

But as one of the individuals, as I would say in this administration,
perceived to be, what is the concept that you are coming from? What is
the background? How do you look at it? Because --

Rumsfeld: Of terrorism?

Q: No, about where to go in the war on terrorism.  Because some people
think that you are carrying back to this administration the mentality
and the strategy of the Cold War that you did serve under during
President Reagan or after that. 

Rumsfeld: Actually I served back into the Nixon administration --

Q: Sorry. 

Rumsfeld: -- and the Ford administration, as well as the Reagan
administration.  Yes. 

Q: Twenty-five years ago. 

Rumsfeld: It's a very different time, and I'm a very different person
and the world's a very different place. 

It seems to me that the past approach of armies and navies and air
forces competing with each other and the need to have a super power in
the United States deter a super power that was expansionist in the
Soviet Union is a time that's gone.  It was another century. 

There are a lot of people who still seem to have their head stuck in the
Cold War.  I don't.  Since I've been here we've been addressing not Cold
War problems, but the problems of the 21st century, which is why we've
been working to transform the Department of Defense here, to be able to
deal with the new kinds of threats and capabilities that exist. 

You ask how do I approach it.  I approach it with a great deal of
concern that there are very, very powerful weapons out there, and
because of proliferation of these technologies they clearly are falling
into the hands of some people who are trying to terrorize the world. 

You think of the anthrax mailing to -- imagine a human being getting up
in the morning and deciding that what they'd like to do that day is to
put anthrax in an envelope and mail it to an innocent person.  Now that
takes a certain mentality.  I think the world would be better off
without people who think that way. 

Q: And this mentality, does this come from a certain culture?

Rumsfeld: Not that I know of.  I think we've probably had terrorists
over the history of mankind in all sizes and shapes and stripes. 

Q: Some people are worried because of what is going on since September
11th.  First, 40 or 50 [sic] people with very primitive weapons, knives
and boxcutters, managed to do all of that happened to the U.S.  and to
their homeland.  And also, they were interested inputting all that
military power to deal with Taliban as if it's something similar to the
U.S.  And people wonder what is going to happen if we have to face China
or any military power if we are doing all of that just for Taliban or
government or Taliban, or few people that manage to hijack four
airplanes at the same time. 

Rumsfeld: I guess if you're an American and you look at what happened at
the World Trade Center and here at the Pentagon and you think of the
thousands of people who are dead and the many, many thousands of people
who have lost a parent, it's not that easy to be dismissive and say just
because of this. 

What happens is that the terrorists are able to use America against
America.  They're able to use our freedom and our free society as a way
to damage this free society. 

We're an open country.  We're a democratic country.  Our borders with
Canada are for all practical purposes, open.  Our borders with Mexico
are, for all practical purposes, are open.  We are quite open to people
coming and going in our nation.  We don't spend all of our time carrying
pistols or rifles to defend ourselves.  We expect the best of our fellow
man.  And when a group of people decide that we're wrong and we should
not expect the best of our fellow man, then we have to consider what we
do about that. 

It seems to me one thing one could do is say well, as you suggested in
your question, that's not that much.  Why not just accept that and don't
do anything?

The problem with that is that the weapons today are very, very powerful. 
And it is perfectly possible that those kinds of weapons could be used
and it would be not just hundreds or thousands of people, but hundreds
of thousands of people.  We have an obligation in the government to
provide for the common defense under the Constitution, and we intend to
do that.  The only way to do that is to let the world know that we're
not going to allow our free way of society to be taken from us, to be
stolen from us.  We're not going to allow a thousand or thousands of
innocent Americans to be killed and not do anything about it.  We intend
to find the people that did that and the kinds of people who believe
that's something they want to do, and stop them from doing that. 

Q: President Bush mentioned that the Pentagon and the Defense Department
is adjusting, everybody is adjusting after September 11th.  I know that
the way the command of the five regions for the Pentagon is really being
rethinked or reconsidered.  How about military, U.S.  military presence
in the Gulf, especially Saudi Arabia and others, that at least
presumably created the hostility from al Qaeda people and others.  Do
you think it is worth it to be there?

Rumsfeld: I think that's a reach to say presumably that caused that.  I
mean I don't know what causes some person to inflate their own opinion
of themselves that they begin to think that they are all powerful and
can go out and kill thousands of their other fellow human beings. 
That's not a part of any religion.  That's not a part of any culture. 
That's a behavior pattern that's strange, that's weird, that's wrong. 

Q: But U.S.  military presence would continue to be there regardless of
any price, any cost. 

Rumsfeld: The U.S.  military presence is where it is depending on how
countries would like to have it.  We're nowhere that we're not wanted. 
We seek no one else's land.  We occupy no other country's territory.  We
try to conquer no other people.  Where we are is where people who live
there have decided they would like to have us for their protection. 

If you think about it, the United States went in and saved Kuwait from a
foreign invader, a Moslem nation.  The United States helped Moslems in
Kosovo and Bosnia.  The United States provided, and the coalitions,
provided assistance in Somalia, another Moslem nation.  Now we've been
the biggest food provider for Afghanistan well before this latest
terrorist act. 

The United States has a record of helping people.  It is not a country
that covets anyone else's land or their people. 

Q: That's appreciated, but people also look at the U.S.  supporting
occupation of Palestinian land.  Sometimes I mean condoning target
killing against Palestinians or so some people condemn this.  I don't
know what your opinion is. 

Rumsfeld: The United States has worked tirelessly to try to bring peace
in the Middle East.  It is anxious to have there be peace in the Middle
East.  President Bush and Secretary Powell have worked very hard on it. 
And we've not agreed with the behavior of countries and the Palestinian
organization in that part of the world on a number of occasions.  But we
don't agree with a lot of people.  Some of our allies in Europe from
time to time. 

But to suggest that the Middle East conflict or U.S.  presence of a ship
or an airplane in some country in the Middle East is cause for al Qaeda
and for terrorists to come over the United States and kill thousands and
thousands of people is a tortured thought.  It is not good thinking. 

If that were so, there would be people being killed all across the
globe, and there must not be. 

Q: Finally, any conclusionary remarks that you --

Rumsfeld: I don't have any concluding remarks. 

Q: -- conclude the interview. 

Rumsfeld: Okay. 

Q: If there is something that you wanted to emphasize that I didn't have
in the questions. 

Rumsfeld: I did say one thing that probably was not right.  When I said
I was sweet and loveable.  (Laughter)

Q: Is that for me -- (Laughter)

We will interview Mrs.  Rumsfeld to get her version. 

Q: Secretary Rumsfeld, any concluding remarks that you might have that
we neglected to ask about?

Rumsfeld: Well I would only say in conclusion that I think it's
important for people in the region as well as throughout the world to
understand that the United States is dealing only with the problem of
terrorism.  And this effort on our part is a matter of self-defense.  It
is not against any religion.  It's not against any race.  It's not
against any country.  That's why we're so aggressively trying to be
helpful to the Afghan people by providing food and trying to help them
rid their country of foreign invaders who are fostering terrorism in
that country and bringing great damage and harm to the Afghan people. 

Q: Thank you very much, Secretary Rumsfeld.  I appreciate it.  Thank you
very much. 

Rumsfeld: Thank you. 


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