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[casi] Rumsfeld : 'Blitzkrieg modeling'





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)



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