Presenter: Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld Tuesday, December 23, 2003 1:04 p.m. EST
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Defense Department Operational Update Briefing
http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2003/tr20031223-1061.html
<snip>Q: I'd like to indulge your holiday spirit on a question, since I'm not sure you'll like this one. There is a recently --
Sec. Rumsfeld: (inaudible).
Q: Yes, sir. A recently declassified memo -- 20 years ago, the use of chemical against Iranians and Kurds, it wasn't sufficient to sever ties with Iraq. And indeed the United States government was trying to improve that relationship, and you played a role in that. They asked you to go over and talk to Saddam Hussein about a couple of issues. Twenty years later, the same use of those weapons in those same instances was one of the main reasons cited for going to war.
So you played a role, a central role, in each one of these and I'm wondering of you could explain to people who might look at that cynically and say, Exactly how much of this humanitarian outrage for what happened to the Kurds can we believe here --
Sec. Rumsfeld: Well --
Q: -- if 20 years later, it only got acted on.
Sec. Rumsfeld: I am told that a newspaper printed something out of the archives; I've not seen it. It --
Q: It's a memo from Shultz -- I think it's (to you ?).
Sec. Rumsfeld: It's apparently a memo or something from then- Secretary of State George Shultz. I don't know if it was to me or not, but someone said it was to somebody else, saying that he should be given instructions to do something, which would mean it was not necessarily to me. It may have been --
Q: It's not the memo I'm asking about --
Sec. Rumsfeld: Well, I know, but you've raised it here for the world to see and I thought I might have my time to answer it.
In any event, I don't know that I ever saw it. But to put it into context, the Iraqis were using chemicals and the United States had taken a very strong position against their using chemical weapons.
That is to say, the government of our country was quite publicly opposed to the use of those weapons. They were opposed publicly, and they were opposed privately. And if one brings it fast forward, 20- plus years later, and looks around the world and thinks of the countries that are doing things we don't like today, we do two things simultaneously. We publicly and privately tell them we don't like what they're doing -- as we do North Korea, as we have Libya -- but we simultaneously may very well have interaction with them at one level or another: through the Department of State, through the Department of Defense, through private parties from time to time. And so, you'll see a situation where there's a country that is not behaving as we would like them to behave and not behaving the way we behave. But we nonetheless either have diplomatic relations, or we have diplomatic interaction with them, and communicate on a variety of subjects. That is, there's nothing unusual about that then, there is certainly nothing unusual about it today. We are doing it today in a number of instances. And one ought not to be surprised about that. And the only surprise, really, was that someone reached down into a duffle bag, 20 years old, and pulled that out and pretended surprise.
Q: How did you find Saddam Hussein --
Q: I don't that it's some -- I don't know that it's so much surprise, but I sense that -- I guess there's continuing questions about why the war. And you've answered that a gazillion times, so you don't need to go into that again. But it sort of -- it feeds one part of society's sense that there's a lot more to this war than was stated, or maybe a lot less.
Sec. Rumsfeld: That would be a misunderstanding.
Q: How did you find Saddam Hussein when you met with him 20 years ago?
Sec. Rumsfeld: (Pause.) We knew his address then. (Laughter.)
Q: I mean, was he --
Q: (inaudible)? (Laughter.)
Q: Are Chinese companies banned from going to bid for reconstruction contracts in Iraq, and if not, who do they ask this for, to the Coalition Authority or the Iraqis? And I have one question to General Myers --
Sec. Rumsfeld: Why don't we just do them one at a time? Let's take that one.
So everyone's clear, the United States did not ban any company from doing anything. The United States published a list of companies that it said could bid on prime contracts for funds that were provided by the American taxpayer. It did not address what the Iraqi money can be spent for, it did not address what any other of the 185 nations across this global that give money to Iraq, what their money can be spent for. It did not address subcontracts. All it did was, it published a list of countries that said those countries can bid on prime contracts for the funds that the United States taxpayer are putting up. And it left open the question on subcontracts; it left open the questions on Iraqi money and on the money that is donated by every other country on the face of the Earth.
Q: How do you dispute they're bidding the primary contract bids, oil industry and infrastructure, all the anti-war countries are not getting those?
Sec. Rumsfeld: I think I explained it perfectly. And any country can do anything that I have just said. And that's entirely up to them. It's really not complicated.
Yes?
Q: A few minutes ago, in answering the question about safety of the United States with Saddam Hussein gone, you mentioned terrorist attacks having been stopped.
Sec. Rumsfeld: Yes.
Q: Were they attacks directed inside the United States or in the Middle East?
Sec. Rumsfeld: I'd have to go back. I've got two that are in Asia -- three that are in Asia that just leapt into my mind. There have also been terrorist attacks we believe -- one can't know with certain knowledge until after the fact -- (laughs) -- but we believe that terrorists attacks in this country as well as in other countries around the world have been prevented by virtue of the fact that information came in which enabled people to do things and to behave in certain ways that dissuaded and deterred those attacks from taking place.
Yes.
Q: Did it result in any arrests, Mr. Secretary? I mean --
Sec. Rumsfeld: Yes, it has.
Q: -- are these case that are --
Sec. Rumsfeld: It has.
Q: -- that are --
Sec. Rumsfeld: I've mentioned from this podium, for example, one involving Singapore.
Q: But that's not Saddam Hussein, sir. That's more broad global war on terrorism.
Sec. Rumsfeld: Actually I was talking about the global war on terror.
Q: You mentioned domestic. You thought that there were some cases where possible terrorist attack aimed at the United States were thwarted. I'm wondering if you could cite those examples. I just --
Sec. Rumsfeld: I can't.
Q: Off the top of my head, I can't recall any specifically.
Sec. Rumsfeld: I say it's hard to prove them until they've happened, and then it's too late to prove that they didn't happen. So it's a difficult thing to prove a negative. There have been instances where I am persuaded that terrorist attacks in this country and in other countries didn't happen because of steps that were taken.
Q: And in light of the progress that you said is being made in the war on terrorism, specifically the progress made against al Qaeda, how is it then that al Qaeda -- because intelligence reports apparently indicate that al Qaeda may be at the center of these latest threats against the U.S. -- how is it then that al Qaeda can continue to threaten what is arguably the most powerful country in the world?
Sec. Rumsfeld: Well, because it's not hard. I mean, a -- if you think about it, the United States develops technologies that -- we make them available all across the globe. Terrorists can go take off the shelf technology that they didn't have to develop, that they didn't have the infrastructure or the inventors or the scientists or anything else to develop. But they can buy it, and they have it. So they can use 21st-century technology against the United States with relative ease.
Second, they can attack at any time, at any place, using any technique, and it's not physically possible to defend at any time in every place against every conceivable technique. It's just physically not possible, which is why it is so necessary that the battle be taken to them.
And you say, "How can a murderer murder?" All they have to do is go murder someplace, somebody. And that's how they do that. And they can do it particularly to a soft target, to an innocent man, woman or child. They can also, you know, do what they did with respect to the airplanes.
So they go to school watching what -- how people behave, select out opportunities of -- targets of opportunity and seize them. And our task is put enough pressure on them so that there are fewer of them, it's harder for them to function. But to stop that -- all of it, obviously, is not possible. We just saw what happened in several countries. Just in the last six months we've seen terrorist attacks in various countries around (sic).
So there was -- yes?
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