From today's Defense Department news briefing:
Q: Mr. Secretary, yesterday the president expressed a lack of optimism about the situation in Iraq. And yet the weapons inspectors seem to be getting cooperation, even to the point of going into one of the presidential palaces. We go back to early on in the verbal conflict against Iraq, the goal was regime change. And then by the time it got to the U.N. it became disarmament. And now listening to the president again it seems to be back on regime change. Can you straighten us out, what is the actual goal?
Rumsfeld: Well, I don't think anything's ever changed. Years ago -- four, or five years ago, '98, '97 -- somewhere in that timeframe, '99 -- the Congress passed legislation calling for regime change in Iraq. That has been the position of the government. And the reason it's been the position of the United States government is quite simple: It is that the conclusion was made that he had refused to cooperate with some 16 U.N. resolutions, and that seemed to be a behavior pattern which suggested that he would be unlikely to do so in the future, and therefore the way to change -- to achieve disarmament would be to change the regime, and have disarmament occur that way. When the president went to the United Nations, the U.N. Security Council addressed it in a slightly different way, and focused on disarmament, which had been the U.N. practice over a period of time. And I don't see any change in our -- in the administration's position. I do recognize that the U.N. has emphasized disarmament.
Q: Mr. Secretary, so -- Q Just to follow up. So the goal is actually twofold: disarmament and regime change?
Rumsfeld: I think, you know, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It depends on who you talk to and when you talk to them. If you talk to somebody who concludes -- frequently, if you talk to the Congress, that's our national position. If you talk to the U.N., you'll get different views from different people, because they -- some have a higher degree of confidence that Saddam Hussein and his regime are going to decide that they want to cooperate, in which case they then could disarm, and that problem, that aspect of the problem -- certainly not as his repression of his people, which is another part of the U.N. resolution, which I mentioned in my opening remarks. But that portion of it, disarmament, would have occurred voluntarily. So it depends on who you talk to and when you talk to them, and what their confidence level is as to whether or not Saddam Hussein's regime will change a decade-long pattern. Yes?
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