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. | He doesn't know. |
MR. RUSSERT: Do you think that Saddam Hussein is still in Iraq?
SEC’Y RUMSFELD: I don’t know. | He doesn't know. |
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's not an urban shooting gallery, you see. It's bigger than that. Therefore Byrd is wrong. |
| SEC’Y RUMSFELD: 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. | Rumsfeld interviews himself |
MR. RUSSERT: ... 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. | No prediction means you can't get called on it. |
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. | He doesn't know. |
MR. RUSSERT: Let me turn to the action of the United States Senate last Thursday. They voted by 97-to-nothing ... . “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.’ ..."
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. | Doesn't make sense. If we already did it, then why should the Senate call on the White House to do it? |
| SEC’Y RUMSFELD [about NATO]: Paul Wolfowitz went over there, I’m told, in December and requested NATO’s assistance. | Apparently the Secretary of Defense doesn't have first-hand knowledge of what his Deputy Secretary of Defense is doing on an issue as important as NATO, and has to "be told." |
MR. RUSSERT: When Senator Pryor asked you on Wednesday when did you know that reports about uranium coming out of Africa were bogus, you said “Oh, within recent days.”
SEC’Y RUMSFELD: I should have said within recent weeks, meaning when El Baradei came out.
MR. RUSSERT: Back in March
SEC’Y RUMSFELD: In March, exactly, because I’m told that I was—that after ElBaradei came out with his statement publicly, I read it, and I’m told by the CIA briefer who briefs me that I, on that next day, said, “Who’s right on this?” And they said, “We’ll check.” | El Baradei came out with his statement on March 6 (or 7). Rumsfeld's exchange with Pryor took place on July 9. That's 125 days (more than 1/3 of a year), and hardly recent.
Plus, a couple more "I'm told"s to savor. |
MR. RUSSERT: Vice President Cheney did say on this program they have reconstituted their nuclear weapons. Whether he misspoke or not, I’ll ask him next time he’s here.
SEC’Y RUMSFELD: Yeah.
MR. RUSSERT: But he did make that phrase. Only one time on the program he said it, five other times he said program.
SEC’Y RUMSFELD: I’m sure he meant...
MR. RUSSERT: One time he said weapons.
SEC’Y RUMSFELD: I’m sure he meant program. | This exchange establishes absolutely nothing. |
SEC’Y RUMSFELD [about eventually findinng WMD in Iraq]: I say we will.
MR. RUSSERT: You will?
SEC’Y RUMSFELD: I think so.
MR. RUSSERT: Absolutely.
SEC’Y RUMSFELD: I believe so. I don’t say absolutely. No one can know. | He doesn't know. No one can know. So stop asking. |
| SEC’Y RUMSFELD [about U.S. intelligence]: Is it perfect? No. Almost every month something changes. They come in and they say, “You know we told you this last month? This month—and now we have some additional information from another human source or somebody else and we now think this.” Now, does that surprise me? No. Do we have perfect visibility into a vicious dictatorship like that? No. | Rumsfeld interviews himself again. |
MR. RUSSERT: ... would we disarm North Korea the way we tried to disarm Iraq?
SEC’Y RUMSFELD: What we know is that North Korea, as a country, is one of the world’s leading proliferators of ballistic missile technology, that they are engaged in drug trafficking, they’re engaged in counterfeiting, they are a vicious repressive dictatorship. And they have a nuclear program and say they have nuclear weapons. They would undoubtedly sell those weapons or sell the fissile material if they felt it was in their interest. | When it comes to Korea, suddenly he knows! |
