Interview continued on July 7, 2006

LT GEN RENUART: You know, Mr. Secretary, from the other side of the world those 29 things drove us crazy, because we spent thousands of brain bytes trying to make sure that as we went through that we answered all those "what if" questions. And some of those are a little later in the process, but certainly the vast majority of them got a considerable amount of effort put to them as we talked about early on.

MR. WOODWARD: Yes, yes.

LT GEN RENUART: What do you do about WMD? What do you do about the fall of Baghdad? What do you do about a fortress Baghdad? What do you do about these various contingencies that could come up?

And so some of the comments that are made by people who say nobody paid attention to them just, from my view, didn't -- that wasn't true.

MR. WOODWARD: Did the list actually come down to you, do you know, through General Franks?


Bob Woodward

LT GEN RENUART: I think General Franks actually got a copy of that list. I didn't see it. I got -- you know, Franks, he turned 29 questions into 53. I got a whole variety -- I say 53, but it was a substantially bigger number than 29, because as he read that, he began to think of, well, what about this thing? And so we go off scurrying trying to come up with ways to make sure we acknowledge those in the planning process.

And then the bulk of those topics came back into the NSC, where General Franks briefed specific issues on eight or 10 or 12 of them.

MR. WOODWARD: Right.

SEC. RUMSFELD: When you think of the amount of time we spent on fortress Baghdad.

MR. LUTI: He briefed that six different times.

MR. WOODWARD: I have that in the non-Bible --

SEC. RUMSFELD: I don't know how many meetings were called on that subject, but it was unbelievable.

MR. LUTI: Secretary Rice probably --

MR. WOODWARD: Really went into orbit about that, didn't she? -- to the extent

MR. LUTI : Well, she asked that question at least once or twice where we thought we had briefed it, and -- but -- so it was something …

MR. WOODWARD: Kept coming back.

SEC. RUMSFELD: (Off mike) -- no plan. You all didn't have a plan; you hadn't thought through the plan --

MR. WOODWARD: Can -- are you willing -- could your new military assistant go through all 29 of those with me, so --

LT GEN RENUART: (Off mike.)

(Cross talk, laughter.)

LT GEN RENUART: So there is risk here.

(Laughter, cross talk.)

SEC. RUMSFELD: Did you see what was on the door when you came in?




MR. WOODWARD: No.

SEC. RUMSFELD: A reporter like you not that observant?

MR. WOODWARD: No, no, I would -- people get upset if you look at what's on their desk.

SEC. RUMSFELD: On the door, on the door.

MR. WOODWARD: Yeah, but it's private. (Laughter.)

So you won the squash game against --

LT GEN RENUART: It's perspective.

MR. WOODWARD: Oh, really?

SEC. RUMSFELD: (Off mike) -- debate if you can be a good enough squash partner to get the job. (Laughter.)

(Cross talk.)

SEC. RUMSFELD: What else? What else did you not talk about?

MR. WHITMAN : Well, the only thing I wanted to do was to take this little bit of a canard that's out there about WMD and how it's been played in retrospect about WMD and the comments the secretary made about, "we know where it is" and this thing has been dissected out there in ways that, I think, are very unfair and very inaccurate

MR. WOODWARD: I went through this with Larry DiRita, and I agree -- I mean -- (cross talk).

MR. WHITMAN: He always referred to suspect sites.

SEC. RUMSFELD: The intelligence community's sites that that they showed us is what I was referring to.

MR. WOODWARD: I understand. I went through that with Larry, and I mean, I don't even raise that.

I'm -- if I could get all 29 of these -- this is from "Plan of Attack," my last book, which I now call the non-Bible. It has a new subtitle.

SEC. RUMSFELD: I've not read it.

MR. WOODWARD: I understand. But it talks about your memo and the 29 things.

SEC. RUMSFELD: Oh, does it do it?

MR. WOODWARD: Yes, sir. And I only had some of them. See, this is why it's not biblical. It has some of them, and it has some quotes from them --

SEC. RUMSFELD: It starts out with me writing in my own handwriting, and doing it in a NSC meeting in front of everybody, saying, here are some things that we're worried about and we're thinking about, and you all want to think about these. And I must have listed, oh I don’t know – 10 or 15 or so -- and then I came back and dictated it and then refined it --

MR. WOODWARD: It grew to 29 at least. And you made sure it was part of your deliberations with the president.

SEC. RUMSFELD: You bet.



MR. WOODWARD: Did he say, when you went over this with him, now, do you have a plan to make sure each one of these 29 things doesn't happen?

SEC. RUMSFELD: Obviously. He obviously asked questions about all of them, and he deserved to know that we were worried about these things and that we were thinking about them, and that they are things that occupied us seriously in this department and we needed to brief the people responsible.

MR. WOODWARD: Did you feel you had a plan for each one, or some idea of how to cope with --

SEC. RUMSFELD: Sure.

MR. WOODWARD: -- because it's a great list, a great list -- including the possibility of Sunnis, Shi'ite, Kurds --

SEC. RUMSFELD: We thought of those things and talked about them and discussed them and had people considering them. And we had the – your policy group [looking at Bill Luti] had to address a lot of it, the military had to address a lot of it. Some of the things that were more interesting to others than others, and some sparked like Fortress Baghdad was a nightmare for people in the White House – Fortress Baghdad -- it was one a lot of people were very interested in.

MR. WOODWARD: And I think the Marines --

SEC. RUMSFELD: You can imagine how terrible it would have been.

MR. WOODWARD: The Marines were really worried about some sort of urban hunkering down, I think.

SEC. RUMSFELD: You bet. And the possibility of bridges getting blown --

MR. LUTI: Oil fields --

SEC. RUMSFELD: -- oil fields getting set off, and the terrible environmental nightmare you saw in Kuwait.

MR. WOODWARD: Last night I went back and looked at everything and I -- what I really appreciate you doing this again --

SEC. RUMSFELD: Did you tell your dear wife that I appreciated her high compliment?

MR. WOODWARD: Yes, I certainly did. No, you -- (laughter) -- well, and she said, if I may quote her back, she said, and "well, did you say because I know he's a hard hitter.

SEC. RUMSFELD: Did she really? (Laughs.)

MR. WOODWARD: Yes, she did. (Laughs.) And I said, I don't know --

SEC. RUMSFELD: I know he's a hard hitter.

MR. WOODWARD: (Laughs.)

This book, the new one, also non-biblical, is a narrative of scenes like the other books -- and I understand you don't have time to read them. And so it's kind of like a movie: this scene, this scene. A portrait emerges of the president as a wartime leader, which I'm trying to address as best I possibly can. And the real first question for you: Can you recall any important scene, interchanges, moments of decision, that show him doing it and leading like that? Because I went back and read your Truman Library speech earlier this year, and you told a great story about Truman when he met with Molotov.

SEC. RUMSFELD: Un hm

MR. WOODWARD: And he gave Molotov hell, and Molotov said, "I've never been talked to like that in my life," and Truman recalled.

SEC. RUMSFELD: “Don’t behave that way and you won’t be”

MR. WOODWARD: Exactly, carry out -- (laughter) -- carry out your agreements and you won't be talked -- (inaudible). You know that's -- and I got some, and I --

SEC. RUMSFELD: I can remember going over -- what I tried to do with him is to put myself in his shoes, and say, what would I want to know, and what was -- how can I, when I take his time on something, come out of here with him having -- and address the specific issue that provides him an umbrella answer for other like kind of issues. So I can remember being in there with Tommy Franks and targeting questions as to the issues of the natures of the targets, how we -- so that when we left he saw that we were looking at is it better to do it in day or night? Would the buildings be more or less occupied by civilians at what time of day? What might be the collateral damage in neighboring areas? Are there ways to slant weapons?

MR. WOODWARD: Come in from this angle --

SEC. RUMSFELD: Exactly. What angle --

MR. WOODWARD: -- because there's a school over that way.

SEC. RUMSFELD: So that he would come away not picking targets, but coming away with a template that he was comfortable with -- Franks and his team and I and this team -- were -- had an approach that was rational and as humane as possible, but as effective as possible in terms of saving American lives. And so I can picture meetings where that type of thing was done -- of that type -- that specific, but also a series of --

MR. WOODWARD: Can you recall any in the postwar period, what I call after the -- after May 1st, after major combat, where -- and you know, what I would say is --

SEC. RUMSFELD: Take this big issue on training and equipping and where we sent in, I guess, now three or four assessment teams every six months to try to take a look at how we were doing, do we have the enablers and all of that.

[Portion deleted by ground-rule and mutual consent]

MR. LUTI: From the very beginning with our experience in Afghanistan we went right off --

SEC. RUMSFELD: Right, I started right off in Afghanistan trying to train and equip and I wanted to do the same thing in Iraq. The bottom line was this: We have -- had a tendency in the Department of Defense, U.S. Department of Defense, to think that the only people who can train anyone were the Special Operations. I ended up -- every time I turned around they were sending them off to Georgia, the Republic of Georgia, to train them. They were training Karzai's personal security forces. They were training everyone around. And I said, look, we only have so many of these people. We need more. We're working like [heck] to get more.

[Portion deleted by ground-rule and mutual consent]

We should work like the dickens to get more. But, by golly, there's hundreds of Marines and Army people who can train people. They're good at it. They know how to do it. They do their own. And let's start using them. And we started replacing all of them with other people. Then I said, let's get contractors to do some of this.

MR. WOODWARD: Why did Paul Wolfowitz have the feeling there was some hesitancy on your part?

SEC. RUMSFELD: No idea –

MR. WOODWARD: Did that ever come up?

SEC. RUMSFELD: I can’t imagine. No. No.

MR. WOODWARD: -- that there would be -- and even -- I think he told someone that he felt he almost had to hold your hand to sign the order for either the Eikenberry or setting up the training.

SEC. RUMSFELD: Oh, that’s silly. Do you remember any of that?

LT GEN RENUART: No. The only discussion really was -- as we do so well, -- we couldn’t train anybody to be like an American -- to the level that we train Americans.

SEC. RUMSFELD: Which I've been against.

STAFF: And that was, I can remember, discussion of let's train them to the best Iraqi soldier they can be or Afghan soldier they can be

SEC. RUMSFELD: You bet.

STAFF: as opposed to making them a U.S. Special Forces --

SEC. RUMSFELD: The other thing I said was, [heck] – I remember during the Vietnam War, I turned around and we were training people to be doctors instead of medics, and what the Vietnamese people needed were medics. They didn't need U.S.-style hospital care over there at that stage. And the same thing on T-28 pilots. I remember we were training Vietnamese to be T-28 pilots, and I've been a T-28 flight instructor. Then I was an instructor of flight instructors. And I said, why don't we train the instructors to teach them how to do it -- train Vietnamese to be T-28 flight instructors, so that we can create an institutional capability that's on a level that's similar to --

MR. WOODWARD: So what level of training were you seeking -- in other words, you're not going to make them Americans.

SEC. RUMSFELD: Ask Casey. It's good enough.

MR. WOODWARD: Pardon?

SEC. RUMSFELD: Casey's answer is good enough.

MR. WOODWARD: Good enough meaning?

SEC. RUMSFELD: Whatever is appropriate. Good enough. But it is not that they're going to end up winning the soldier of the year award at Fort Bragg. I mean, it just is not in the cards. You've got too little time, too many people to deal with, too fast a turnover, and you simply got to do what you can do.

MR. WOODWARD: Describe generally, or if you think of any, I drive back at this point, the president as a wartime leader, because that's the issue here.

SEC. RUMSFELD: Well, he is. And he's a good one. He's a very good one. You watch him, and I don't know quite how he does it; he moves from -- I mean, here in this department we move across the full spectrum of maybe 180 degrees. He moves 360 degrees. He'll go from stem cell research to immigration, you know, 15 other things in a given day. And the stuff we bring to him on a regular basis is complicated, it's tough -- and he has a very effective technique where he -- first of all, he's a very rapid reader, and he absorbs quickly. But he also asks questions, and he just keeps pinging question after question after question. And then he boxes the compass. He ends up looking at the thing multi-dimensionally instead of one-dimensionally. And I assume -- I know -- I don't assume anymore; I know -- what he's also doing in the process is he's getting to know the people and taking their measure and seeing how they handle those questions and how they answer them, how much they know and who they rely on for answers to things. And he ends up coming away with a confidence level, and he develops an ability to know how much -- how long a leash he wants different people to be on.

MR. WOODWARD: How long is your leash?

SEC. RUMSFELD: Oh, goodness gracious, don't ask me.

MR. WOODWARD: I am.

SEC. RUMSFELD: I have no idea.

MR. WOODWARD: Do you feel a tug sometimes? Because you know, people who work for you feel the tug. It may be a long way away, but you make sure that, you know, you're --

SEC. RUMSFELD: I am constantly trying to think what ought he to know. How can I help make his job easier? Looking at it from his perspective, how can we present it without a lot of acronyms and in a way that he can approach it presidentially?

MR. WOODWARD: You could write a book on you and Cheney. How is Cheney's role in this? How does he help you? Give me some sense of him, because you know, there's this urban myth out there that he's the all powerful vice president and he controls the president. (Laughter.)

SEC. RUMSFELD: That's nonsense. He -- really they have a very good relationship; you can feel it in the room. But the president is the president, and let there be no doubt about it.

MR. WOODWARD: Can you think of an example? I have some examples to share of that.

SEC. RUMSFELD: The vice president doesn't even -- isn't even slightly confused on the issue. He is very -- his handling of issues when the president is in the room is, in my view, just perfect in the sense that he does not take strong positions when the president is in the room that could conceivably position him contrary to the president in the room. I've not with him when he's alone with the president, but I have every confidence that he does there what he does with everybody else alone, and that's tell him exactly what he believes, because he knows that one of the prices of proximity to the president is the willingness. The burden that goes with that is the burden of having to tell him the truth, what you really believe, for good or bad, positive and negative. And I'm sure he knows that that's one of the responsibilities of the person who's in that close proximity to the president. And he does it. I'm not there, so I can't say he does it, but I do know that he is -- if I -- put yourself in the president's shoes, I think his handling of that relationship in the presence of others is just about as good as it could be. He asks good questions, but he doesn't put the president in a corner or take away his options.

MR. WOODWARD: Is Cheney your best friend --

SEC. RUMSFELD: Oh, goodness.

MR. WOODWARD: -- in Washington?

SEC. RUMSFELD: Oh, I don't know. I don't rank friends in that sense. He clearly is a person that I know well, and have for an awful long time. I have a lot of respect for him. I think he's doing a terrific job as vice president of the United States. But the implication that we work closely together particularly is -- I mean, I don't know, we just don't. I mean --

MR. WOODWARD: He doesn’t call a lot --

SEC. RUMSFELD: No, we're not on the phone all the time. Neither one of us are visitors particularly. We both have full lives. We're doing our things. He's a friend and he's a darn good vice president.

MR. WOODWARD: There was an interesting time last summer at the White House when the speechwriters and Bartlett and Card decided that the language of resolve that the president always talks about -- we're going to stick this out; we're not going to -- (inaudible) -- was no longer working, that it wasn't enough, that you had to go a little bit further and say, yes, we might have made some mistakes -- as a way of demonstrating that, you know, we're charting a new course. This kind of led to the clear, hold and build that we talked about yesterday. Did you get involved in that question of -- you know, the language of resolve is a very interesting -- it's important from the bully pulpit. But there was a very clear-eyed assessment there with --

SEC. RUMSFELD: I wasn't involved in it.

[Portion deleted by ground-rule and mutual consent]

MR. WOODWARD: Back on. And the reason I ask this -- I interviewed the president for eight hours --

SEC. RUMSFELD: Wow!

MR. WOODWARD: -- (inaudible) -- books, and get a sense -- and there's a tendency he has, which -- and he said to me -- he said, I'm a gut player. I -- you know, the president has to lead, calcium in the backbone. You don't -- and so this -- there's an element of denial in his personality, where he's just saying -- no. And he was on Larry King last night saying things he told me three years ago -- (laughs) -- I mean, exactly the same talking point: Saddam Hussein was a threat; it was the right thing to do to remove him -- you know, verbatim language. Is there an element of denial in this? Is that -- (inaudible) --

SEC. RUMSFELD: No. I think it's, first of all, conviction. And second, it is a historical context –he reads history. And he knows that those who have persevered are the ones who have made this country what it is. And that there have been -- in every conflict there have been dark, dark days and that he also -- when I say conviction, he also knows that we can't lose a battle over there. The only place he can lose it is here. And he understands that intuitively. He understands it intellectually. And he also looks beyond the difficulties that people face. And I'm sure -- I mean, I know it's true with me that when I read about the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, World War I, World War II -- I'm reading on North Africa now and my goodness. You can’t read those histories and not see all the difficulties and the problems. And the numbers of people who are saying toss in towel -- you can't do it, we're not going to get there, the Cold War, lord -- the Mansfield amendment, pull the troops back now

[Portion deleted by ground-rule and mutual consent]

MR. WOODWARD: It's a wrestling match now. You're back on top. Go ahead.

SEC. RUMSFELD: He knows that. And he knows that perseverance and --

MR. WOODWARD: I talked to people over there, and let me ask about an important relationship involving him and also you, because you and Joyce go to the military hospitals. And some people over there shared -- and the president has said publicly that most of the soldiers who are injured, their families say, "keep going, don't give up," calcium in the backbone. Then three incidents I know of where people have challenged him, family members who have said, "Only you can stop this." Another one said, pointing to her maimed son, and said, "Was it worth it, Mr. President?" And he has expressed to people anguish --

SEC. RUMSFELD: Sure. You can't help it. You cannot help but come out of there – I’ll put it in priority order – inspired and strengthened -- and you are because the wounded there – disabled veterans -- an enormous percentage are anxious to get back to their units -- proud of what they've done, confident that they'll be able to survive injuries in one way or another. In a case with their leg off, go back to jump school, qualify for status and get back to Iraq. You come out inspired and strengthened, to be sure. You also cannot help but look at those wonderful human beings and see the damage that has been done to their bodies and not understand the difficulty of tying a tie or putting a shirt on. You know, the simple things.

MR. WOODWARD: So do you feel anguish at those moments --

SEC. RUMSFELD: Oh, sure. My goodness. No one could do that and not feel that, in my view. It is a -- it is something that I look forward to doing, do frequently. Joyce always goes – almost always. And I always come out and -- you come out and you get in the car and you talk about the experience of the people you've met, the soldiers and sailors and Marines, the families, and how inspiring they are and how different they are in their personalities, and yet how almost predictable they are in their pride of their service. And we are so lucky to have people like that.

MR. WOODWARD: Have any family members in any of those times accosted you --

SEC. RUMSFELD: Sure.

MR. WOODWARD: -- and said --

SEC. RUMSFELD: Sure.

MR. WOODWARD: What have they said?

SEC. RUMSFELD: I don't think I want to discuss the family conversations. They have indicated their disagreement with the conflict in Afghanistan, the conflict in Iraq. Personal disagreement -- and I don't recall -- it has almost always been a family member, as opposed to injured soldiers, wounded.

MR. WOODWARD: What do you respond to them, just to help maybe? The president says, I can understand how you feel right now.

SEC. RUMSFELD: Sure. I mean my goodness. They're going through a period in their life where something that they had loved and cared for and nurtured is damaged, and in a way that they never anticipated. And you can certainly understand the fact that any person in that circumstance is going to go through some swings of emotion, and it depends on where you get them and where they are when you're there.

MR. WOODWARD: Does that give you any swing of emotion yourself where you kind of go --

SEC. RUMSFELD: Certainly, certainly. There are things that raise that question in my mind -- but not that so much.

[Portion deleted by ground-rule and mutual consent]

SEC. Rumsfeld: The -- it is part of this job. I understand that historically. I understand it from my prior service here. I understand it today. So I do not go away and think, gee, this is something that I ought to -- (off mike).

MR. WOODWARD: Yesterday when I was leaving, we talked about Admiral Vernon Clark and how he didn't become CNO -- or become chairman. And I understand that this goes way back to Shelton, who was chairman when you came in -- recommended that Clark be his successor.

SEC. RUMSFELD: I don't know that.

MR. WOODWARD: Yeah, Shelton has said that multiple times that he recommended to you that --

SEC. RUMSFELD: I don't know that. MR. WOODWARD: You don't believe he would --

SEC. RUMSFELD: I didn't say I believed it or didn't believe it. I said I don't know that. I am very precise. If you say something that I don't remember, I am not going to say it's wrong, and I'm not going to say it's right. I'm going to say I don't know that, and I don't.

MR. WOODWARD: You don't recall?

SEC. RUMSFELD: I don't recall that. I could go back maybe and look at the list, but my recollection is we talked to probably 10, 15 people about four or five individuals and triangulate it, and that the -- Vernon Clark was ranked high and Pete Pace was ranked high and Dick Myers was ranked high. Dick Myers at that time.

MR. WOODWARD: And you said Clark in the end didn't want it.

SEC. RUMSFELD: I didn't say that. I said -- I think I said he didn't seem to want it. He was very engaged in the Navy doing a terrific job, and I didn't have the feeling that he was leaning forward anxious to do that. And I had always kind of -- and I clearly held him very, very, very well up there. He knows that, and I knew that, and the president knew that, and all of us were very respectful of his talent. But I kind of like someone who wants to do something, who’s a tough guy and who can take a lot of stuff. And it strikes me that someone needs to be leaning forward and wanting to do it. I think maybe Vern didn't. I did get him to stay extra long --

MR. WOODWARD: In the Navy.

SEC. RUMSFELD: -- as CNO.

MR. WOODWARD: Do you recall a conversation with him about that? Because there's actually a record of this which I have seen where he talked to you about -- he was going to see President Bush for an interview, and he said, I want to talk to you, Secretary Rumsfeld, and see if we're on the same page.

SEC. RUMSFELD: Mmm-hmm.

MR. WOODWARD: What you believe and what you expect of your chairman -- do you recall such a conversation?

SEC. RUMSFELD: That would be fairly typical for me, yes.

MR. WOODWARD: And you -- I mean, it was real kind of interesting, intellectual confrontation about what do you believe; if I'm going to be your chairman, I've got to know what you believe, because there's lot of studies going on at this time. And he laid down something about under Goldwater-Nichols he has a responsibility to give independent military advice to the president --

SEC. RUMSFELD: Oh, sure, that comes up always, and I obviously agree with that, that’s what the law is. Absolutely. Not just to the president, but to the National Security Council.

MR. WOODWARD: Do you remember a real kind of clash with --

SEC. RUMSFELD: Oh, not at all.

MR. WOODWARD: You don't?

SEC. RUMSFELD: No.

MR. WOODWARD: You also mentioned during the briefing that there was -- and this is important in this discussion of numbers of troops -- that there was a plan to ramp up. You were drawing a line and you had decided not to --

SEC. RUMSFELD: My recollection is this: that we did not know how many troops it would take. And he said you ought to have as many as you're going to need. And one way to do that is to put them in train, get it started, get that mobilization process going, because the president is engaging in diplomacy, and we don't want to go to war. The goal is to not have to. It is going to be the very last choice, and we're going to find a way to give Saddam two or three extra chances at the end, even one to leave the country before it started, which we did. And -- but we wanted to have him to have the ability to have as many as we needed. And I don't know what the top number is --

MR. WOODWARD: Yeah, what was the top number, 400,000 or something?

SEC. RUMSFELD: Four-hundred thousand to 500,000.

LT GEN RENUART: It's about 400,000 total troops. Ground combat forces build to about 275,000 or so, and that includes divisions, cavalry regiments and Marines.

MR. WOODWARD: And that would have been -- when would that point have been reached?

LT GEN RENUART: Well, you remember the -- you know, we were sort of in the 11, 15 -- I forget the numbers now, but the plan as it evolved had about a 90-day period of build of combat operations, because we weren't sure how long it would take to get to Baghdad and beyond. And so that substantial build occurred over about a 90-day period.

SEC. RUMSFELD: Once we started --

LT GEN RENUART: It started much earlier than that --

SEC. RUMSFELD: -- Earlier than that, in terms of the timing and the preparation and all of that. And then we said, okay, should there be some on-ramps or off-ramps if you need to add somehow. And they did. They came back with some --

LT GEN RENUART: Off-ramps.

SEC. RUMSFELD: -- off-ramps, we called them. And that you review along the way and then make a recommendation, which you did, and which we accepted.



LT GEN RENUART: Yes, sir.

MR. WOODWARD: And what was the basis of the recommendation to then not add more troops? As you know, this is one of the big controversies.

SEC. RUMSFELD: Canards. Yeah

MR. WOODWARD: -- great controversies in all of this --

SEC. RUMSFELD: It was based on what the combatant commander needed, and he made a judgment that he had what he needed or would have, as this played out, and that he would not need the additional ones that were in the queue to come in were they needed. And he made that recommendation, and I made the recommendation to the president, and we agreed with it.

MR. WOODWARD: So it would have been Franks and Abizaid when they took over making recommendations?

SEC. RUMSFELD: Abizaid was the deputy during that period.

LT GEN RENUART: Kind of the division that was -- I guess the plateau was, as we brought the 1st Armored Division in, the one that we took to the off-ramp was 1st Cav. And that's kind of where we said , nope -- General Franks made the decision -- no, I didn’t bring 1st Cav. in.

MR. WOODWARD: Why do you think it's a canard, this business of number of troops, just to get it on the record? Because it's out there as --

SEC. RUMSFELD: Well, you know, people serve in the military or write about it as journalists and old timers. And they have needs that they develop over their careers, and they look at what's going on, and they are asked what they think and then they say what they think. And they have opinions, just like anybody else --

MR. WOODWARD: But you now, your opinion on this issue.

SEC. RUMSFELD: I mean, let me just go on. So then they say something, and then that becomes their position. And they may base it on a lot of knowledge or not too much knowledge. But the fact is that each of these things are debatable. Someone can legitimately have different views. And so they do. They do have different views. And it should come as no great surprise. There's been different views in every war about all kinds of things as you go through this. And the people who have the responsibility for making the decisions have to make the decisions, and the people who don't have responsibility for making the decisions can extend their opinions, and they do. And there are people who say you have too many, there are people who say you have too few, there are people who say you're going too fast, you're going to slow, whatever it is. And that's life. And I accept that. But the interesting thing to me is that so many of them say, "oh, it's Rumsfeld," as though I'm sitting around with a black box figuring all this out. And anyone who knows me or watched me do anything knows that I don't do it that way. I come here into this job --

MR. WOODWARD: The recommendation of the combatant commander.

SEC. RUMSFELD: -- knowing that there's no one smart enough to do this job. All you can do is to come into it and then figure out who smart people are, ask them a lot of questions, get advice from multiple sources, and then sift it, and then make recommendations and make a judgment who you're going to put your confidence in. I can't from sitting eight thousand miles away, say, "oh, you should have had more or less." Other people do it, and they do it from their armchairs, loud and strong. I can't. I can't do that. I just know I don't know.

MR. WOODWARD: Fair enough. Fair point. So you never bought the argument from where you're sitting that there weren't enough troops at any point in this?

SEC. RUMSFELD: I -- it's entirely possible there were too many at some point and too few at some point, because no one is perfect. And the people -- all of us that were trying our best to make these judgments were doing it in a context of concern about having enough to get the job done and enable a process, political and economic process – to go forward -- and not so many that it persuaded people that we were there to steal their oil and occupy their country and disrupt and cause disturbances in their neighboring countries that cause the overthrow of some of those other regimes. And so we made the best judgment we could. And in retrospect, I have not seen or heard anything from the other opiners that would suggest to me that they have any reason to believe they were right and we were wrong, nor can I prove we were right and they were wrong.

MR. WOODWARD: So in a sense it's an unknown unknown?

SEC. RUMSFELD: I'm afraid it is, because unless you try things other ways, you can't then compare them and have different approaches. But the only thing I can say is they seem to have a lot more certainty than my assessment of the facts would permit me to have.

MR. WOODWARD: Fair point. And the opiners, if I can put them in a box, seem to say that you either intentionally or unintentionally rejected what's called the Powell Doctrine of overwhelming force.

SEC. RUMSFELD: It's the Weinberger Doctrine, I think.

MR. WOODWARD: It used to be. Now it's called the Powell Doctrine.

SEC. RUMSFELD: And that's incorrect. We didn't reject it or accept it. We looked at all the factors and the dynamics in this different situation, and I made -- people made recommendations to me which I agreed with. And I'm comfortable with them --

MR. WOODWARD: I understand.

SEC. RUMSFELD: -- today.

MR. WOODWARD: I understand. I mean, that really puts on exactly how to look at this in a much more complete way than I've seen anywhere. I think it's --

SEC. RUMSFELD: It will probably end up on the cutting room floor.

MR. WOODWARD: No, it won't. (Laughter.) I can see there’s honesty in that because, you know, as I'm writing the new Bible on this -- (laughter) -- I have what's called the "Gospel According to Don." (Laughter.)

MR WHITMAN: We've got about 10 minutes.

[Portion deleted by ground-rule and mutual consent]

MR. WOODWARD: And quick things I want to make sure that before 9/11 the CIA was working on all their bin Laden action plans, and you weighed in to question some of the intelligence, asking questions in your hard-ass way that this might be deception. They may be trying to measure our reaction and defenses; then the agency and others did a study on this that showed very clearly, no, it's real. But you recall asking questions about that?

SEC. RUMSFELD: I ask questions every day. I'm not smart enough to know the answers, so I run around asking questions.

MR. WOODWARD: Steve Herbits -- your friend --

SEC. RUMSFELD: Yes.

MR. WOODWARD: -- what about him? Was he useful to you?

SEC. RUMSFELD: He was. He was helpful on the personnel side. He was my special assistant the first time, and Admiral Holcomb was my military assistant. And I got them both to come back. Admiral Holcomb was doing the military promotion thing, and Steve helped with the civilian recruiting. They're both very smart and very fine people.

MR. WOODWARD: He supposedly came in -- now this is December of '02, so four months before the war, and said to you -- this is a note: You are in the unique position to being the sole person who could lose the president's reelection. And he went on to say that the postwar operation, that Feith and company are running is screwed up, and then you started looking very hard at who? This kind of put you on the train to find Jay Garner -- to find somebody to run that office. Do you recall that?

SEC. RUMSFELD: No. Doesn't mean it didn't happen, but --

MR. WOODWARD: Understood, understood. That was -- you really looked at a hundred candidates for Garner's position -- or for Bremer's, I'm sorry.

SEC. RUMSFELD: Both. We got all kinds of names from everybody, people talked about them in the State Department and the White House and here. We all did --

MR. WOODWARD: Last question then. If you -- this is very important -- were to lay out an optimistic scenario of what might happen in Iraq, what's the case for it’s working, with some sense of time and consequence? In other words, best-case scenario or realistic best-case scenario. Do you see what I mean?

SEC. RUMSFELD: Optimistic best-case -- I mean, this business is ugly, it's tough. You know, there isn't any "best." It's a –when did I say it-- long, hard slog. I think I wrote years ago and it is. It's -- we're facing a set of challenges that are different than our country understands -- our public. And we're a democracy and we need to be rooted in the public. They're different from our Congress understands. They're different than our government -- much of our government probably understands. And is organized or trained, or equipped to cope with and deal with. They are complex. We're dealing with enemies that can – turn inside our decision circles. They are -- they don't have parliaments and bureaucracies and real estate to defend and interact with or to deal with or cope with, and they can do what they want. They aren't held accountable for lying or for killing innocent men, women and children. There's something about the body politic in the United States that they can accept the enemy killing innocent men, women and children and cutting off people's heads but have zero tolerance for some soldier who does something he shouldn't do. And it is an environment that is vastly more complex because of the fact that we have all of these new realities in terms of e-mails and video cameras and wire transfer.

MR. WOODWARD: Are you optimistic in the fighting?

SEC. RUMSFELD: We're fighting the first war of history in this new century and with all these new realities with Industrial Age organizations and in an environment that has not adapted and adjusted, a public environment that has not adapted and adjusted.

[Portion deleted by ground-rule and mutual consent]

MR. WOODWARD: Because Bob McNamara said publicly -- and very interesting and hard point, and I want to ask it directly of you. He said, "Any military commander who's honest with you will say he's made mistakes that have cost lives."

SEC. RUMSFELD: Mmm-hmm.

MR. WOODWARD: Is that correct?

SEC. RUMSFELD: I don't know. I suppose that if a military commander --

MR. WOODWARD: Which you are.

SEC. RUMSFELD: No, I'm not.



MR. WOODWARD: Commander in chief, secretary of Defense, combatant commander.

SEC. RUMSFELD: I can see a military commander in a uniform who is engaged in a conflict having to make decisions that result in people living or dying and that that would be a truth. And certainly if you go up the chain to the civilian side, to the president and me, you could, by indirection, two or three steps removed, make that case. But the fascination with that question comes up at almost every press conference. "Oh, tell us every mistake you've ever made, please. We want to have a litany of all your mistakes." And I hear it over and over. And they ask the president. And finally everyone says well, of course there have been mistakes made. And then they'll tell us about these mistakes. You know? I think it's kind of a -- my attitude is this: Our job is to get up every morning and figure out how we can help protect the country and the American people, and to have people that are dedicated to this country, that are patriotic, that care about defending the American people, and help to organize and encourage and lead and bolster their efforts to do that. And sitting around contemplating the kinds of questions that you in the media are so fascinated with is not my idea of how to spend my time on the taxpayer's dollar.

MR. WOODWARD: Can I just say something very -- we know each other well enough -- that you don't understand the power of admitting error --

SEC. RUMSFELD: I do.

MR. WOODWARD: It is the most powerful thing you can do is to -- (inaudible) -- as the leader --

SEC. RUMSFELD: I've done that. I've done that.

MR. WOODWARD: You have.

SEC. RUMSFELD: I've done that.

MR. WOODWARD: I understand that. I understand.

SEC. RUMSFELD: But do I need to do it every day?

MR. WOODWARD: No.

SEC. RUMSFELD: Do I need to spend an hour on it with every journalist who comes in and says, "Oh, tell me all the terrible things you've done"

[Portion deleted by ground-rule and mutual consent]

SEC. RUMSFELD: I have demonstrated my understanding of that principle.

MR. WOODWARD: Yes, I understand.

SEC. RUMSFELD: Then why did you say you don't understand?

MR. WOODWARD: Well, I think --

SEC. RUMSFELD: He's not as bad as he sounds -- (inaudible). (Laughter, cross talk.)

MR. WOODWARD: Will you get him to write me a snowflake about -- (laughter) -- have you ever written a journalist a snowflake?

SEC. RUMSFELD: No.

MR. WOODWARD: Oh, could I be the first to get a snowflake?

No, seriously --

SEC. RUMSFELD: They are reserved for --

MR. WOODWARD: You're going to think of things about Bush or Cheney that should be in my book that if you just -- you know, they come to our head, make him a snowflake for the Bible, for the "Gospel According to Rumsfeld."

[Portion deleted by ground-rule and mutual consent]

SEC. RUMSFELD: The Cold War was won not by some buildup to a crescendo of a military battle. It was won economic, political and military. And the war on terror, the struggle against violent extremists, is going to be won the same way-- over an sustained period of time. And anyone who thinks it is purely a military battle is wrong. It is going to take the same kind of patience and persistence, and ultimately it will take what helped us prevail in the Cold War, and that is the fact that through successive administrations of both political parties, people recognized the threat and they were willing to invest and persevere, and they were willing to work with other countries in Western Europe, in this case, and make tough decisions.

MR. WOODWARD: And Wolfowitz got -- right after 9/11 set up this thing called – Bletchley II. Do you remember that? Chris DeMuth at the AEI --

SEC. RUMSFELD: I asked him to. I said look, we ought to get some group going to think about --

MR. WOODWARD: And they wrote a paper, seven pages, called, "The Delta of Terrorism," meaning the origin of terrorism, and it essentially said we are in a two-generation war with radical Islam, and we have to do something, and we better start with Iraq.

SEC. RUMSFELD: I remember that.

MR. WOODWARD: Yeah. It had a lot -- quite an impact on the president and Cheney and Rice, because it was short, and it said a two-generation war; that other countries are the real problems, but you can't deal with them; you better start with Iraq.

SEC. RUMSFELD: Interesting…I don't remember that. I remember asking that they gather a group and that we think that through discussed it with Paul. Where you there Bill?

MR. LUTI: No?

SEC. RUMSFELD: I had in mind something different than they ended up with, and I participated in the initiation of it.

MR. WOODWARD: which was more or less -- (inaudible) –

SEC RUMSFELD: More like Bletchley.

MR. WOODWARD: Think tank or



SEC. RUMSFELD: -- yeah, that you'd end up with a continuing body that would bring together some very fine minds, on a highly confidential basis, and provide you the intellectual content for something that was obviously new and different and challenging. And that did not happen.

MR. WOODWARD: And just one quick thing so I'm -- I'm going to be able to cover everything here. In '03, this business about the Army and where the Army took McKiernan out and put Sanchez in with his very light headquarters, a number of people have said you were not happy with that because it wasn't visible to you – what was happening. Is that correct?

SEC. RUMSFELD: That's true.

MR. WOODWARD: What happened there?

SEC. RUMSFELD: I have no idea. I shouldn't say I have no idea. I've asked people to think about it so that we don't repeat the mistake. And regrettably, the lessons learned, what occurred, ended at the end of major combat and did not start up again until about six months later. And it was during that period where things happened that I did not have visibility into. I do not know the extent to which other in the building did, but no one on the civilian side that I know did. And I'm -- it's not clear to me that Pete Pace or Dick Myers did.

MR. WOODWARD: Because I know at the time how you were talking with Franks about putting in a four-star as the commander in Iraq in May of '03, you were discussing it.

SEC. RUMSFELD: I felt badly a year or so later when I started looking at all that stuff that had happened so rapidly without my awareness. So that is about my learning. I also felt badly for General Sanchez. I think he ended up in a position that was difficult.

I've got something that's time sensitive.

Interview Ends

[Unrelated banter deleted by mutual agreement]

Part I