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
It turns out that we have not found weapons of mass destruction. And does everyone know he had them at one point? Certainly. Does everyone believe -- even those in the U.N. who voted the other way -- acknowledge the fact that he had filed a fraudulent declaration with the United Nations?
The way that we can leave that country better than we found it, a lot better -- no more mass graves, no more prisons filled with people -- we can leave it by investing in the kinds of security that we're talking about here, ... That is what this request is overwhelmingly about.
People say, 'Well, where's the smoking gun?' Well, we don't want to see a smoking gun from a weapon of mass destruction.
Imagine, a September 11 with weapons of mass destruction. It's not 3,000. It's tens of thousands of innocent men, women and children.
We know where they are. They are in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad.
Any country on the face of the Earth with an active intelligence program knows that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction.
We know where they are [Iraq's weapons of mass destruction]. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.
Our task, your task... is to try to connect the dots before something happens. People say, 'Well, where's the smoking gun?' Well, we don't want to see a smoking gun from a weapon of mass destruction.
Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.
When there happens to be a weapon of mass destruction suspect site in an area that we occupy and if people have time, they'll look at it.
There are people who in large measure have information that we need . . . so that we can track down the weapons of mass destruction in that country.
We never believed that we'd just tumble over weapons of mass destruction in that country.
They may have had time to destroy them, and I don't know the answer.
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,