WEYMOUTH: What did you think of the Osama bin Laden tape? RUMSFELD: I’m not inclined to come out with a series of sound bites on the tape. I already knew what I thought of the fellow.
Why do you think he made it? No idea. He was obviously proud of himself.
Near the start of the war, didn’t you urge that the bombing be made more aggressive? Commander Tom Franks and I knew that we needed to get U.S. forces on the ground with the opposition forces so that they could provide the coordination with the airstrikes. Once General Franks was able to do that, it changed things dramatically.
Do you have an exit strategy? We know what we want to do and when we have done it, we can go do it someplace else. What we want to do is to capture or kill the senior Taliban leadership and see that they are punished. With respect to Al Qaeda, we want to capture or kill the senior leadership and catch and imprison the remainder, so they don’t go back to their countries, reorganize and then attack us again. When those things are accomplished, we will have done our job militarily. That doesn’t mean that U.S. has done its job because we do have an obligation to help see the food and medical needs of the people are met. We don’t want Afghanistan a year from now to go back to being a place that harbors terrorists.
After Afghanistan, what is next for the U.S.? The president has not made an announcement.
Don’t many people in this building think it should be Iraq? There are undoubtedly people who have different views on the subject.
There was a report that U.S. military people were spotted in Somalia last week. Are you preparing for action there? I’ve seen those stories. They are just stories.
Do you feel confident that Osama bin Laden is in Afghanistan and will be captured? Until you have the senior people, you don’t have them. You have to keep putting pressure on them, trying to find out where they are, offering rewards for people to help you find them and someday you will find them in Afghanistan or somewhere else. We’re patient.
Reportedly, there are tunnels from the caves in Afghanistan into Pakistan–the northwest frontier province. Hundreds of them.
Are the Pakistanis actually blocking Afghans or Taliban who are attempting to flee Afghanistan? Trying to. It’s very hard. [The border] is so long, so porous, so mountainous and so rugged. There are so many passes, and you can walk across, go by mule or donkey or bribe your way through. On the Afghan side, we have some forces that are attempting to block some key passes. On the ground, we have some forces at various key transit points inside Afghanistan.
The president gave notification that the U.S. will withdraw from the 1972 ABM treaty. Do you believe that with the U.S. facing so many different kinds of threats so much money should be spent on a ballistic missile shield? We need to recognize that it’s unlikely that armies, navies and air forces are going to attack us because we have such strong forces. Therefore, the asymmetrical threats–ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, terrorist attacks, cyberattacks–are ways they can leverage their capabilities.
If a cruise missile is launched from a ship offshore, then the missile defense system won’t protect against that, will it? Ballistic missile defense is one thing. Cruise missile defense is another.
Wasn’t September 11 an enormous intelligence failure not only for U.S. agencies but for the foreign services with whom we are friendly? Clearly, one would wish it had not happened. There are lot of things that people intended to do that did not happen because people stopped them.
Since September 11? Prior and possibly since, I don’t know. We are vigilant and are constantly arresting people and interrogating them and finding out things they were thinking of doing and stopping them. Terrorists can attack at any time, at any place using any technique. It is not possible to defend every place at every moment of the day or night against every conceivable technique of terrorism. The only way you can deal with it is to go after them and stop them.
