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SEC. DONALD RUMSFELD: TV INTERVIEW PART ONE February 4, 2002 JIM LEHRER: Now our newsmaker interview with the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld. Mr. Secretary, welcome. DONALD RUMSFELD: Thank you. JIM LEHRER: The president's budget is being called a war budget. What would you call it? DONALD RUMSFELD: I would say that it is a budget that reflects the priorities that are appropriate to our times. The pattern always is that if you're in a war, if you're in a conflict, that you need to fund that conflict. Some have tried to do guns and butter, both, in the past, as we recall. In this case the president decided to moderate and hold down spending for things other than defense or homeland security, and so for the most part that's been the case. This is, I think, a very appropriate and thoughtful, wise budget. JIM LEHRER: Before 9/11, you talked much about reforming the military, changing the way things work, changing the culture. Does this budget reflect any of that? DONALD RUMSFELD: Oh, indeed, it does. The 2003 budget, which was part of the President's budget announced today, has a great deal of transformation in it. There's some who define transformation one way, would say that there's some $20 billion worth of transformational activities; another way of defining it would say $50 billion. I think it's almost inappropriate to look at dollars. I think that - that transformation is not an event; it is a process. It is something that involves a mind set, an attitude, a culture. It is something that, for example, might not even involve a new weapons system. It might just be the connectivity among existing weapons systems. It might be a different way of organizing or fighting, as we found in Afghanistan. So I think the transformation - the word - needs to think about it and understand that it's more of a process than an event. JIM LEHRER: But if somebody were to look at this budget - forget the money for a while - just look at what it buys, does it buy anything that's different than what we already have? DONALD RUMSFELD: Well, I think when you say "that different," it's important to understand that you can - when the Germans transformed their armed forces into the Blitzkrieg, they transformed only about 5 or 10 percent of their force. Everything else was the same, but they transformed the way they used it, the connectivity between aircraft and forces on the ground, the concentration of it in a specific portion of the line, and it - one would not want to transform 100 percent of your forces. You only need to transform a portion........ cheers, pg (or should I say Heil) _______________________________________________ Sent via the discussion list of the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq. To unsubscribe, visit http://lists.casi.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/casi-discuss To contact the list manager, email casi-discuss-admin@lists.casi.org.uk All postings are archived on CASI's website: http://www.casi.org.uk