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Strategies & Market Trends : VOLTAIRE'S PORCH-MODERATED -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jim Willie CB who wrote (47847)	2/20/2002 10:31:24 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 65232

Rumsfeld Thanks Troops for Games Security Feb 20 2002 1:55PM WEST VALLEY CITY, Utah (Reuters) - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld thanked his troops Wednesday for helping to shore up security at the Salt Lake City Olympics, saying they were seen as "tough ... but courteous." On a tour of the massive Great Basin Logistics Support Area outside the Olympic city, Rumsfeld shot some billiards and ventured into a portable PX -- a store for military personnel -- housed in a tractor-trailer truck. Moving into a candle-lit hall with tables set for breakfast, Rumsfeld talked about his visit Tuesday to the Olympic Village. "There was even a Frenchman who came up to me and said, 'You folks are tough,"' Rumsfeld said. "And I said, 'Good, I hope so.' 'But courteous,' he said. So you're very much appreciated by everyone here, and I thank you also for what you're doing for the country." The brief speech was greeted with cheers and applause. The raucous response was repeated when Rumsfeld turned aside a question about U.S. policy toward Iraq. "The president of the United States makes decisions like that, not the secretary of defense," he told reporters gathered to record his visit. "When I talk to the president, when the president talks to me, we tend to do it in private." When the cheers died down after that last remark, Rumsfeld told the crowd of several hundred military personnel, "I want to take this group with me everywhere I go." Rumsfeld did not dodge questions about the Pentagon's new Office of Strategic Influence, which could provide news items and possibly false information directly to foreign journalists and others to bolster U.S. policy and the war on terrorism. "The Pentagon is not offering disinformation to the foreign press or anyone else. No," Rumsfeld said. However, he continued, "The word deception is an interesting one because it would be wrong to use the word in any context other than a strategic or tactical deception." An example of such tactical deception might be to lead an enemy to believe that a planned U.S. attack was coming from one direction when in fact it was originating from another, Rumsfeld said. Asked to assess the Winter Olympics as a national security event, Rumsfeld demurred: "I don't think of the Olympic games as a national security event, I think of it as a world event where people from all across the globe come together and compete in a wonderful way. "I suppose if one thinks of the problem of terrorism across the globe, we have to be attentive to the problem of security." He said the extraordinary military investment in Olympic security -- some $310 million and thousands of military personnel -- was likely to continue. "I would not think that the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City would be characterized as the ending of having to invest in security, homeland security or in the war on terrorism," Rumsfeld said.