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M2 PRESSWIRE-31 October 2003-US DOD: News transcript. Page 2 of 2.(C)1994-2003 M2 COMMUNICATIONS LTD

RDATE:10302003

Q Are you looking at diverting any resources from the Iraqi Survey Group towards the counter-insurgency fight, even on a short- term basis? And if so, what resources? Can you talk about that?

SEC. RUMSFELD: I can talk about it. I -- it's really not something that I know precisely is taking place. I do know that Director Tenet and I talk frequently about it, and I do know that Mr. Kay and Mr. Dayton discuss these things. And there always have been a series of things that the Iraqi Survey Group had on its platter: Clearly, weapons of mass destruction was the principal one, but it also had POW, it had counterterrorism, various other -- there were four or five things on their list. And it has been a matter for discussion between General Dayton and Dr. Kay, and between Director Tenet and me. On the one hand, the task of finding WMD is important; it is a big interest in the world, understandably.

It is also true that we're having people being killed by terrorists, so counterterrorism is important as well. We're not being killed by WMD at the moment. How they balance that off in any given day is complicated. My impression is that Kay and Dayton have done a good job, and that Director Tenet's done a good job, who Dr. Kay reports to.

If you think about it, you can't take it and put them in separate boxes. If you capture a high-value target, and you incarcerate the person, and then someone goes in and asks them questions, and you ask them a question about WMD or about the POW or one of the other priorities, and then you start talking to them, they may give you an answer that's on three different things that touches on all of them. And the task -- the difficult task that Dr. Kay and Director Tenet have is managing all of that in a way that is in the best interest of our country. And so that's what they're doing, and I have a lot of respect for the way they're doing it. And I think any implication that you're going to throw the switch from here to there or to there to one of the other priorities I think would be a misunderstanding of the complexity of the task, because I don't think you can break a single interrogation, for example, into all of those different pieces.

Yes?

Q Speaking of Dr. Kay --

SEC. RUMSFELD: Oh, I'm sorry. I'll come back.

Q -- and WMD, you know, we're three weeks after Kay's interim report comes out. You've obviously read it and digested it. In retrospect, were you a little too far-leaning in your statements that Iraq categorically had caches of weapons -- of chemical and biological weapons, given what's been found to date?

SEC. RUMSFELD: Well, I think that's a bit of a non sequitur. You -- I said what I believed. I believed it then. I believe it now....

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