Donald Rumsfeld
Donald Rumsfeld
Donald Henry Rumsfeldis an American politician and businessman. Rumsfeld served as the 13th Secretary of Defense from 1975 to 1977 under President Gerald Ford, and as the 21st Secretary of Defense from 2001 to 2006 under President George W. Bush. He is both the youngest and the second oldestperson to have served as Secretary of Defense. Additionally, Rumsfeld was a three-term U.S. Congressman from Illinois, Director of the Office of Economic Opportunity, Counsellor to the President, the United States Permanent...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth9 July 1932
CityEvanston, IL
CountryUnited States of America
Amidst all the clutter, beyond all the obstacles, aside from all the static, are the goals set. Put your head down, do the best job possible, let the flak pass, and work towards those goals.
Congress, the press, and the bureaucracy too often focus on how much money or effort is spent, rather than whether the money or effort actually achieves the announced goal.
A terrorist can attack at any time at any place using a range of techniques. It is physically impossible to defend at every time in every location against every conceivable technique of terrorism. Therefore, if your goal is to stop it, you cannot stop it by defense. You can only stop it by taking the battle to the terrorists, where they are and going after them.
Absent a dictator, absent the Saddam Hussein regime, our goal would be first to have a single country, not have a country broken up into pieces, it would be to see that it would be a country without weapons of mass destruction, a country that did not try to impose its will upon its neighbors and it was a country that was respectful of the rights of minorities and the ethnic groups that exist in the country,
Our goal is to get the tribes in the south to oppose the Taliban, ... They have been relatively quiet thus far. We need them to oppose the Taliban. Therefore, we need them to recognize that they're going to have a voice in the post-Taliban government.
Our goal is to get large numbers of international forces from lots of countries, including those two,
The goal is to have the pressure be so great that Saddam Hussein cooperates, ... Short of that -- an unwillingness to cooperate -- the goal is to have the capabilities of the coalition so clear and so obvious that there is an enormous disincentive for the Iraqi military to fight against the coalition.
increase the number of special operations forces available for missions worldwide, while expanding their capabilities in some key areas.
It's not going to take years, and it's not going to take days. It'll take some months. And then we will go back to the president with our recommendations as to what we believe are the priorities and what needs to be done,
It's not an effort against the Afghan people, ... Indeed, we are providing humanitarian assistance.
not the first major battle, and certainly won't be the last.
Syria's been on the terrorist list for years,
They have to do it for themselves, ... There isn't an Iraqi that comes into this country and visits with me that doesn't say that. They know that. They know that they're the ones that are going to have to grab that country, and it's time.
They know where the bank accounts are, they know the names of the people who were trained, they know the sleeper cells that exist around the world,