RUMSFELD IN THE CROSSHAIRS:
MSI,
Here's a link to the transcript:
msnbc.com
Some highlights of a highly deceptive man's tap dancing:
MR. TIM RUSSERT: Our issues this Sunday, Iraq—the debate intensifies over rising military casualties, faulty intelligence data, the increased cost of occupation and lack of proper planning and preparation.With us, the man who runs the Pentagon, the secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, and the former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, now Democratic presidential candidate, Senator Bob Graham of Florida.
Secretary Rumsfeld, welcome back to MEET THE PRESS.
SEC’Y DONALD RUMSFELD: Thank you.
MR. RUSSERT: The country very much focused on Iraq. Let me bring you and our viewers back to May 1st, when the president addressed the nation. Let’s watch:
(Videotape, May 1, 2003):
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: My fellow Americans, major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.
(End videotape)
MR. RUSSERT: Since that evening, 79 American soldiers have died in Iraq, 382 have been wounded or injured. Was the president too premature in uttering those words.
SEC’Y RUMSFELD: No. If you listen to the words carefully, he was very precise. He said “major combat operations have ended.” He did not say the war had ended. He did not say there would be no one else killed, and I can remember discussing those words with him, because they’re important words. It is true as of that moment, the regime had been thrown out, not to return. But only major combat operation had ended, because we’re still in a war. There’s still a lot of people from the Ba’athists and Fedayeen, Saddam regime types who are there, who are disadvantaged by the fact that their regime has been thrown out, and would like to get back. But they’re not going to succeed.
MR. RUSSERT: How organized is the resistance?
SEC’Y RUMSFELD: There’s a lot of debate in the intelligence community on that, and I guess the short answer is I don’t know. I think it’s very clear that it’s coordinated in regions and areas, cities, in the north particularly. To what extent is it organized throughout the country, I think there isn’t any conviction about that yet. We do know that there are a lot, thousands of people, Iraqis, who had a very good deal during the Saddam Hussein regime. They were the ones running around killing people and creating these mass graves. They were the ones putting people in prison. They were the ones that had all the advantages, and they’ve been thrown out of office. This de-Ba’athification process that we’re going through, where they’re not allowed to participate, in we’re out arresting them and putting them in jail, so they’re unhappy, and they’re determined to try to do something about it. And we’re just going to have to be forceful with them.
MR. RUSSERT: Do you think that Saddam Hussein is still in Iraq?
SEC’Y RUMSFELD: I don’t know. You have to assume he is, and you have to continue to pursue him and that we’re doing and...
MR. RUSSERT: Are we on his trail?
SEC’Y RUMSFELD: We are working very hard at it, and until you have him, you don’t have him. Until you get closure and conviction, you don’t have him.
MR. RUSSERT: Did we underestimate the fear factor amongst the Iraqi people that until they are absolutely convinced that Saddam Hussein is dead or captured, they are going to continue to resist, or at least not cooperate?
SEC’Y RUMSFELD: I think it’s wrong, Tim, to talk about the Iraqi people as though it’s a cohesive whole. In fact, the fear factor is very important in that country. Here’s a man who for 30 years was killing, hundreds and hundreds, and tens of thousands of people, if Iraqi people, he killed, and so there is fear that he might come back. He isn’t going to come back, let there be no doubt about that.
MR. RUSSERT: But we must find him.
SEC’Y RUMSFELD: We do need to find him. We do need to get closure, and it’s quite different from Osama bin Laden, for example. The fact that he has not been found isn’t causing that kind of a problem. The fact that Saddam Hussein has not been found does cause a problem. But there are a great many Iraqi people, of course, who are signing up to be policemen, signing up to go back in the army, opening schools, opening universities, opening hospitals, and there’s a lot of progress taking place on the ground. What’s important is that the leftovers, the dead-enders from that regime, are targeting our successes. They shot someone at the university, which is—the university was open, and it bothered them that it’s open. The schools are open. We have a police academy training people, and they attacked the police academy. So they’re trying to target success, and I’m afraid we’re going to have to expect this to go on, and there’s even speculation that during the month of July, which is an anniversary for a lo t of Ba’athist events, we could see an increase in the number of attacks.
MR. RUSSERT: Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator, said it’s going to be a rough summer.
SEC’Y RUMSFELD: I think that’s right. He’s doing an excellent job, and General Abizaid and General Sanchez both agree with that.
MR. RUSSERT: Robert Byrd, the Democratic senator from West Virginia, said it’s an urban guerrilla shooting gallery.
SEC’Y RUMSFELD: I heard that.
MR. RUSSERT: Do you agree?
SEC’Y RUMSFELD: Well, it is not restricted to urban areas, for one thing. It is happening in some urban centers. It’s also happening in some non-urban areas. Is it a shooting gallery? Are people being shot at? Yes. Is it a difficult situation? You bet. Are more people going to be killed? I’m afraid that’s true. On the other hand, the outcome is going to be a good outcome. It’s an enormously important country. What we’re doing there is important. And we’re being—we’re making progress. And the more progress we make, I’m afraid, the more vicious these attacks will become, until the remnants of that regime have been stamped out.
MR. RUSSERT: There has been an awful lot of criticism that the Pentagon and you vastly underestimated the level of resistance and the difficultly in the occupation. Now, this was The New York Times back in May: “The Bush administration is planning to withdraw most United States combat forces from Iraq over the next several months... The administration does not want substantial numbers of American forces to be tied down in Iraq. It is eager to avoid the specter of American occupation, and it is hoping to shift much of the peacekeeping burden of stabilizing Iraq to other governments. If the administration plan is carried out, the effect would be to reduce the number of American troops in Iraq from over 130,000 soldiers and Marines at present to 30,000 troops or fewer by the fall.”
That’s just plain not going to happen.
SEC’Y RUMSFELD: Well, we never said it was going to happen. I don’t know who you’re quoting. You’re not quoting anybody. You’re quoting a newspaper.
MR. RUSSERT: But these are senior Bush administration officials.
SEC’Y RUMSFELD: Oh, now, Tim. Come on. Senior officials. How many are there? Thousands in the government. I’ve never said anything like that. No senior military person ever said anything like that. We didn’t know. I said repeatedly that we didn’t know how many forces it would take. In fact, we now have about 147,000 U.S. troops there and another 13,000 coalition, about 160 total. My guess is that that number is going to stay there for the foreseeable future. And are we willing to increase it if necessary? You bet. The president says we’ll have as many forces as are needed for as long as they’re needed, and not any longer.
MR. RUSSERT: So it may be increased?
SEC’Y RUMSFELD: It could be increased. Now—but let me talk about forces. There are U.S. forces. There are coalition forces. And there are Iraqi forces. And we are out recruiting Iraqi army and Iraqi policemen right now. They’ve got something like 28,000 Iraqi policemen on the streets already and the coalition provisional authority have plans to increase that up to, I believe, 60,000 in a relatively short period of time. The Army is in the process of being increased. We have 19 countries engaged in Iraq at the present time. Another 19 have agreed to send in forces and assistance of various type. And another 11 countries are considering it. So as we bring in coalition forces, and increase the Iraqi forces, we have the potential for reducing some of the U.S. forces. We’re also going to have to redeploy these forces. Some of them have been there now close to a year and obviously we’re going to want to bring some of them home.
MR. RUSSERT: Let me stay with the whole idea of planning and estimating. This was the headline in The New York Times just on Thursday. “Rumsfeld Doubles Estimate For Cost of Troops in Iraq.” It’s now a billion dollars a week, which is double what we had predicted. Or you had predicted.
SEC’Y RUMSFELD: No. I didn’t have a prediction.
MR. RUSSERT: In terms of the money allocated by the administration it’s now double what had been allocated and predicted.
SEC’Y RUMSFELD: That’s not—I don’t know that that’s true. What I know is I asked in response to a question, “What do we—what is our current burn rate?” And our current burn rate, I believe, is about $4 billion a month.
MR. RUSSERT: Correct.
SEC’Y RUMSFELD: I have avoided consistently predicting cost. I watched what happened in Bosnia, in Kosovo, and “How long would you be there? What will it cost?” And they said, “Well, we’ll be out by Christmas.” That was six years ago, in Bosnia. They—the cost, it was something like a third of what it ultimately cost. And I said, “If you don’t know, tell the world you don’t know.” And I have consistently said, “We can’t know because there’s so many variables.” And the idea that because some newspaper comes up with some number and then three months later says, “Well, there’s a different number,” that somebody underestimated or overestimated, I think it misunderstands the actual facts. We’ve been very careful about saying what we knew and what we didn’t know.
MR. RUSSERT: Let me take you back to February and a question-and-answer session with you, and here was the question: “Army Chief of Staff General Shinseki said it would take several hundred thousand troops on the ground to secure Iraq and provide stability. Is he wrong?”
Rumsfeld: “What is, I think reasonably certain is, the idea that it would take several hundred thousand U.S. forces, I think, is far from the mark. ...it’s not logical to me that it would take as many forces ... following a conflict as it would to win the war.”
The fact is, we now have as many forces on the ground as it took to win the war. You suggested moments ago it may take more. In retrospect, wasn’t General Shinseki correct?
SEC’Y RUMSFELD: Well, put the quote back up.
MR. RUSSERT: Sure will.
SEC’Y RUMSFELD: He said several hundred thousand.
MR. RUSSERT: Right. Troops on the ground...
SEC’Y RUMSFELD: Troops on the ground...
MR. RUSSERT: ...to secure Iraq and provide stability.
SEC’Y RUMSFELD: He was talking about U.S.—the question was about U.S. servicemen.
MR. RUSSERT: It’s right here. “...take several hundred thousand troops on the ground...”
SEC’Y RUMSFELD: Right.
MR. RUSSERT: “...to secure Iraq and provide stability. Is he wrong?”
SEC’Y RUMSFELD: No.
MR. RUSSERT: Let me show you your answer again.
SEC’Y RUMSFELD: Right. Right.
MR. RUSSERT: ...because this is important. “What is, I think reasonably certain is, the idea that it would take several hundred thousand U.S. forces, I think, is far from the mark. ...it’s not logical to me that it would take as many forces ... following a conflict as it would to win the war.”
SEC’Y RUMSFELD: Right. OK. How does one respond to that? First of all, General Shinseki is a fine officer. He was pressed and pressed in a congressional hearing for an answer, and he finally answered, saying that. He said it in good faith. Several hundred thousand is 300,000 and more. That’s what several hundred thousand means. We have had a total of 148,000 or 150,000 in there. That is not several hundred thousand.
MR. RUSSERT: We have 150,000 in there.
SEC’Y RUMSFELD: I think right now we have 147,000. That’s what I said. That is not several hundred thousand. That is half of several hundred thousand. It is 10 weeks after the war, less than 10 weeks after the war, Tim. Ten weeks: Think of that. And what do I think about what I said? I’m comfortable with what I said. I don’t know how many it’ll take. I think that several thousand sounded high to me then. It sounds high to me now, and that’s what I said.
MR. RUSSERT: But you would acknowledge it is taking as many on the ground now to occupy it as it did to win the war.
SEC’Y RUMSFELD: Ten weeks later, that’s true. You...
MR. RUSSERT: And for the foreseeable future.
SEC’Y RUMSFELD: No. It may be, as I said, that if we are able—and we believe we will—to increase the number of Iraqi soldiers and Iraqi policemen, and if we’re able to increase the number of coalition contributions, as we believe we will—as I just said, we’ve got 19 countries that are already discussing various sizes of forces they would put in, and those forces are due to come in in the September-October period, July, August, September—it seems to me that the numbers of U.S. forces are unlikely to go up. Now, could they? You bet. If they’re needed, they will be there. But I’m quite comfortable with that, and I think that that doesn’t mean that General Shinseki’s wrong.
MR. RUSSERT: Let me turn to the action of the United States Senate last Thursday. They voted by 97-to-nothing—and I’ll show you on the screen the way it was reported in the papers. “The U.S. Senate unanimously approved a measure calling on the White House to consider requesting NATO and U.N. troops in Iraq. In a 97-0 vote, the senators said President George W. Bush ‘should consider requesting formally and expeditiously that NATO raise a force for deployment in postwar Iraq similar to what it has done in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Kosovo.’ ...[Sen. Joseph] Biden said it was time U.S. officials made up with Paris and Berlin — prime opponents of the U.S.-led war in Iraq — in order to demonstrate ‘a measure of maturity. ...It’s childish,’ Biden said...” Will we formally request...
SEC’Y RUMSFELD: We did.
MR. RUSSERT: You’re not...
SEC’Y RUMSFELD: We already did.
MR. RUSSERT: Formally requested NATO and U.N....
SEC’Y RUMSFELD: We went—Tim, the reason that was 97-to-nothing is because we’ve already done that. We...
MR. RUSSERT: Formally requested.
SEC’Y RUMSFELD: You bet. Paul Wolfowitz went over there, I’m told, in December and requested NATO’s assistance. NATO has been involved almost from the beginning. NATO is doing the force generation with Poland to assist them in providing their leadership position in the stabilization forces...
CONTINUES, NEXT POST.... |
