Mr. Rumsfeld
At the Munich Conference on Security Policy, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld made himself available to answer questions posed by journalists, military officials and politicians from a variety of countries. We cite the official DoD transcript:
At the Munich Conference on Security Policy, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld made himself available to answer questions posed by journalists, military officials and politicians from a variety of countries. We cite the official DoD transcript:
Man identified as a Palestinian general: You talked about countries that were trying to produce weapons of mass destruction… Iraq and Iran and North Korea. I have a question, a direct question for you. What are you doing with Israel? As far as Israel is concerned, Israel has more atomic weapons in the region than any other country. Why do you remain silent in regard to Israel?
Secretary Rumsfeld: You know the answer before I give it, I’m sure. The world knows the answer. We take the world like we find it; and Israel is a small state with a small population. It’s a democracy and it exists in a neighborhood that in many – over a period of time has opined from time to time that they’d prefer it not be there and they’d like it to be put in the sea. And Israel has opined that it would prefer not to get put in the sea, and as a result, over a period of decades, it has arranged itself so it hasn’t been put in the sea.
Dr. Saleh Rusheidat, ambassador of Jordan to Germany: Some of the Israelis… said they need 20 years more to solve the [Palestinian/Israeli] problem. My question to you, what should be done to solve this problem? How much time do we have to wait?
Secretary Rumsfeld: It depends, I suppose to some extent on the – oh, what’s the right word – the desire on the part of the people in the region to solve it. People in the region tend to look outside the region and say, my goodness, why doesn’t somebody come in and solve this? Why don’t they grab people by the scruff of the neck, push them together and make them agree? That lasts about five minutes…in the last analysis, a lasting solution in that part of the world is going to come because people are exasperated, exhausted and tired of seeing their opportunities for prosperity go down the drain and tired of listening to people shoot off their mouths and people shoot off their weapons and fire bullets and no one deliver a dad-burned thing for the people.
Senator Lindsey Graham, SC: Could you please explain why the doctrine of preemption is a rational doctrine in the war on terrorism?
Secretary Rumsfeld: If someone is going to throw a snowball at you, you may not want to act preemptively; you can afford to take the blow and live with it and do something after the fact. As you go up the scale from a snowball to a weapon of mass destruction, at some point, where the risk gets high enough that it is not going to be a snowball in your face, but it could be a biological weapon that could kill tens of thousands of human beings; and then you ask yourself, do you have an obligation to take the blow and then do something about it afterward? Or if you’ve got at risk – not 3,000, but 30,000, or 300,000 [potential casualties] – do you have an obligation in that case to act somewhat differently?