what were they called, bear bombers. we were spending $233 million a year in ice land to have our -- this is 2001, 2, 3 in there, to have our aircraft working with nato to keep track of soviet bombers. the soviet union had been gone for a decade. and they were still there. it took me three or four years to get it done. resistance from nato, from the state department, resistance from ice land. we wasted $1 billion while i was trying to get him out of ice land. everyone agrees that you need change and nobody wants to change. i mean, i cancelled the crusader artilly piece, and the outcry was unbelievable.

on capitol hill, in the army. can you imagine at the beginning of the war a worse name for a weapons system than crusader? it took two of our largest cargo airplanes to move the thing anywhere with its ammunition and its crew. today you ask, i don't know a single, even an artillery person. we put most of of the money into precision weapons. i don't know an artillery person who doesn't agree. bit for 24 month savage calls, who does he think he is. thank god i did it. >> mr. ford. >> a lot of people would argue that the american way of war, we found great success from the war

of 1812, world war ii, and i think that we defeated the soviet union because we were prepared for total war. on the other hand we saw a lot of problems, had struggles with limited war. was there a concern in the administration after nin that we were unable or unwilling to take part in total war in order to defeat our enemy? >> well, the total war works, has worked, does work in a conventional environment. anything short of that unwise. trying to defined what total war is in an asymmetric situation is very difficult. when i use the word difficult that's probably the understatement of the day. there isn't a leading edge of the battlefield.

there isn't an army or a navy and air force to be defeated. these people don't operate in the open. they send women and children to suicide. you have to find their sources of money. you have to find the countries that are hospitable to them. and you have to recognize that for every offense there is a defense. and for every defense there is an offense. and it's this way, though you've got this fairly clean conventional approach. it seems to me that answers your question. do you think it does? or are you uncomfortable with that? >> i think it's comfortable predicame predicament. >> but the answer, does that answer your question? you uncomfortable with the

answers? how would you answer it? >> i would say that it's extremely difficult. to consider total war that attacked. i don't think in battle we had to consider what total war is defined in the tactical. when we're relying on the corporal in the villages, we're putting a lot of pressure on these individuals to define or decide. what -- how to use it. it's an incredibly difficult task. >> i created a website, rumsfeld.com and on it i don't remember the year but i remember the date. i sent a note down to general meyers and i said basically, are we winning or losing?

i don't think we have met tricks. we know what you measure improves. you get what you inspect. not what you expect. but what are the metric that we have that shows that we're killing or capturing or dissuading faster than they are recruiting and funding and training. we don't have metrics to do that. it's a mystery. it's a black box out. there you might go to the website. the website to my amazement. i have something like 265 thousand dollars documents. i put 200 plus on the website and it had over 40 million hits on that website since february 8 of last year. sounds to me like a lot. but that stevenson speech i quoted earlier is on it and that mem or is on it. it may be october 16.

it showed my concern with the question you're posing. how do we know whether we are gaining traction. is it by minds changed in the ideological area, going into terrorist organizations being stopped or slowed in some way. is it the number of countries that areal becoming less hospitable. what are the measures? you have to have metrics if you are going to know how you're doing. and it's hard. tough stuff. >> talking about metrics, do we have metrics and what's the forecast for the iranian nuclear development program. that's a tough one. what are the political

implications? >> well, you have a country that has -- calls the united states the great satan and the evilist thing on the face of the earth. you have a country that israel the little satan and deserved to be shoved in the sea or incinerated and the jewish people have no right to a state. you have a tun that is actively supporting terrorism in a number of parts of the world. and they are without question -- they have enormous oil reserves and energy capability. they don't need energy to turn their lights on that's for sure. everyone seems to agree. biv pen out for six months. everyone agrees they are on a path toward developing a nuclear capability. from the standpoint of the

united states, their behavior would be different if they had a nuclear weapon. they would have a capability that would be persuasive and intimidating to other countries. not to us. we're a long ways away but they can reach us. they have taken a ship down a river into the sea. and launched a missile. you don't need to reach the u.s. the radar signals out of the kind of cardinal ships that go in and out are common. and it would be almost impossible to figure out which ship did that. and they have done it. now, one of the best things a person can do is try to put themselves in somebody else's shoes and ask yourself if you were an iranian how would you

beha behave, what would you do with that? it's hard because they are directed by a faith, religion, and ideology that is quite different from what we are. it's also interesting to put yours in the shoes of an israeli. an israeli leader knowing what they say, what their behavior is. that these people, they are in charge of the country. not the iranian people. clearly would put israel at risk. and one has to assume that a responsibleisraeli leader getting up in morning and looking at his country which is about that wide. you're in a jet aircraft you better start turning across the coast or you're going through

israel so small. very small population. what kind of risk do they want to take. one has to assume they would do something. i also have to assume that their intelligence is probably better than ours. where the iranians are on that journey which i believe is a journey toward the development and fabrication of nuclear weapons but where they are on that journey i've -- i've heard so many estimates for so many years i know i don't know. think of it this way. it's a known unknown. >> time for a few more questions. >> mr. secretary, you mentioned changing of institutions at the inflection point. now i'm curious to get your thoughts on what you think the role is of nato particularly

with you're pen countries. >> the rur bean countries are below 2 percent. nate or if they take -- the highest gdp, greece and turkey for the wrong reasons. and they are declining. they are below 2%. their social network is enormous and growing. their demographics are bad. the chances ever their doing anything to increase their defense capabilities are modest. where does that meev. >> question europe, north america. most of the problems they face are external. and there are drugs and piracy and various things that exist and that if you wanted to create

nato you couldn't. when i was the ambassador in the early '70s it was 14 countries in the political part but not the military. that's good. it's enlarged in my view. their problems are outside of nato. therefore i think what they ought to do. have a partnership for piece program. they have relationships with people who are not members at the present time. that's a good thing, they ability the ability to work with -- good morning is one people. they ought to develop a linkage with other like thinking nations. you have singapore, new zealand, a number of countries that are democratic. they are not like western europe

or the united states but there are similar -- freer economic systems. and som sort of a mickage it seemed to me would enable nato to arrange itself with added military capability and do a better job of assuring the interests of the nato countries. much better than they can today. but that is a reach for them. if you will. and i think it will happen. i don't know how lost. that is an institutional change they have to make if they want to be relevant. >> in your opinion did the assad regime fall do you have pen thought on what our, the iranian

leadership's course of action may northbound. >> i don't but they have enormous influence, they are important there for politically, important financially. i think that the -- it would be unlikely if the assad government fell that it would be replaced by an alo white government because it's a small minority in the country. i think the iranians would have enormous influence as to what actually evolved as that leadership and my guess is it would be something that would be much more to the side of the extremist. and the muslim brother who had or the people who would better fit the iranian leaderships. view of the world. but that is a guess. and besides this that i don't

innocence hypothetical questions. >> mr. secretary, you talked about the spectrum. when we do our foreign policy, is there a certain minimum below which we can't support a state? or is it like you said their rate of improvement, how do you decide that? >> imperfectly. we have a congress, we have an executive branch. we're influenced by the media, influenced by international views on these things. and we kind ever reach around and try to figure it out. i think the truth is if we decided we would -- we would be purists and only have relationships with countries that were like us, we would have about three or four relationships in the world. and then if we wanted to say we not only will have relationships with countries that are like we

are, but we won't have relationships with those countries unless they break ties with countries. then we'd have nobody so. we know that we cannot be purists. we have to say okay, we're going to deal with people who are different. and the majority of the people who are different, their countries are different. we have toing september that. now is there a minimum. nazi germany. they work in a uniform, i think not. why. what do we have. you take a piece of paper and you draw a circle, then you divide it into threes and say these are our political interests, we want to deal with companies, we have economic interest. they are different. we have countries where we have

important interests and don't have political similarities. then we have security and some people say well, human rights trumps security. or economic interests trump security interest. i don't think anything trumps anything. i think we have to make a in the meantime. if you look at -- draw a circle. you find some countries where we only have political exam or security, some we have two of the three and very view where we have all free. that is why i made my point. i think what's important is not our country is exact lick like we are but which way are they moving? are they moving in a direction -- how can we encourage them to move toward fleer economic systems. that is in their interest, in the world's interest. and anything we can do to encourage that, becoming highly

judgmental and making decisions because they are different than we are, we're not going to do this. we did with it pakistan, two of the largest in the world. 10, 20 years ago. we felt wonderful. we didn't like the way the indonesian and police were behaving so we severed military-to-military. decades went by with the largest muslim country having no military-to-military relationships with. what did we help. all we did was deny us those relationships. deny them the ability to work with our fantastic military. we did the same with pakistan. when 9/11 occurred we didn't have military people in our country who had any linkages with the military in pakistan. when the earthquakes occurred we

poured assistance in. and by golly, the next year the favorite toy in pakistan was a miniature chinook helicopter. it did more to reduce support for bin laden in pakistan, our high man therien aid, than anything else. what hurt us we didn't have military to military relationships to speak of. so i think one has to not try to make us feel good by saying goodness, that country is doing something we don't do. we don't believe in it. it's wrong and he shouldn't do it that way therefore we're not going to deal with them. who does that help? does it make them more like us? move toward freer political systems? no, not likely. so i don't know the answer. and it's as i said it's an art, not a science. and no one person decides it even a president. it was i think the pressler

amendment in the senate. in the congress that stopped our relationship with pakistan. could be wrong. could have been indonesia. i'll give you one other exampl. right now, i don't have any idea who knew bin laden was in pakistan. if i would have been bin laden, i wouldn't have told a soul, except one person and that person would be out interfacing, getting what i needed done. i would not have told a lot of pakistanis. what is the common view in america? the common view is, come on, he was within a stone's throw of the west point of pakistan. how could it be they didn't know? that's what they say. i was in the pentagon for six years. i don't have any idea what's going on in those states up the potomac river, one mile, two

miles, three miles. big walls, big trees. i don't know who is in there and i don't know what's happening and i know i don't know. now, is it possible that someone in pakistan knew? sure. does anyone have any evidence that they did? not that i have heard. so what's happening? people are rushing to judgment. here is pakistan. you know, by golly, they are not helping us as much as they should. they got mad. they stopped us, our ability to transit their country, to support afghanistan. they started saying we can't use this base for this, that, or the other thing. they started threatening, they can't use overflight rights. what do we say? let's cut off military aid to pakistan. you get this action, reaction, action, reaction, rush to judgment. by golly, when someone can come and tell me that they have hard facts that the pakistani government, i don't mean some pakistani, but the pakistani

government, knew that bin laden was there and they were housing him and protecting him and being hospitable to him, then i'll believe it, if i see some evidence. until then, i know i don't know what's going on in those estates up the potomac river from the pentagon. anyone driving up there looks ait, anyone could be in there. how many years did it take to find this guy, bolger, from massachusetts, the ten most wanted criminal on the fbi list. 20, 30 years they have been looking for this guy. they finally find him out in california after decades in our own country, we can't find someone. the department of defense and the cia are not perfect at man hunts. that's not what we do particularly. it is hard work and it is difficult but we are doing the same thing in egypt right now. the egyptians got mad. they kept some americans in and

wouldn't give them visas to get out. one was the son of the secretary of transportation. people in the congress started saying, cut off military aid to egypt. my goodness, that's the only linkage we have got is that military to military relationship. we sure don't have it with the muslim brotherhood in the parliament. we have to be mature and not purists. i love to be a purist. i'm as easy to do that as anybody else. then, you have to say, wait a minute, what are the effects? what's really going to happen if i make myself feel good and say, by golly, i'm not going to tolerate that. we get worked up in the congress and we get worked up in the press. it does make us feel better if something wrong happens and we want to put our foot down and say, by golly, that's wrong.

i'm not going to tolerate it anymore. then, you look at what happens. how would you like a failed state in pakistan when all of those radicals in that country with the intelligence organization affected with -- infected with taliban relationships, nuclear weapons, imagine, imagine where we would be? much worse off. does that mean there is not a limit? no, there is a limit. where is it? that will have to get sorted out by people above my pay grade. >> our time is rapidly coming to an end. >> you want shorter answers, i can tell. >> i would like to continue much longer. i could do this for hours with you. the courses the conservative intellectual tradition, we started looking at conservatism beginning with ar ris stotle and talked about the fact that the

conservative movement came together as a coalition, a fusion movement with traditi traditionists, libertarians, neoconservatives. that was the rallying cry to fight the soviet union much the soviet union has come to an end. what will keep this coalition together? >> and the world is a better place. >> and the world is a better place for it. is it radical islam that will keep the movement together? will the movement dissipate? where do you see it heading? >> well, it has been a, as you suggest, a coalition. coalitions tend not to be permanent. they tend to evolve in some way as circumstances evolve. i think clearly the continuing threat from islamist and rad cam

islamists, is something that causes a large fraction of our population to recognize that we need to behave in a certain way that protects the american people. i think the excesses we have seen in terms of the debt and the deficits and the reality that we have a model in europe that has demonstrated it doesn't work and that we would make a terrible mistake to model america on western europe. i think these kinds of issues, as well as social issues that people discuss in the political context are going to undoubtedly cause differing people to different extents to be part of what has been now, during my adult lifetime, a conservative movement that has ebbed and

flowed. it has become a majority and less so depending on circumstances. i think necessity is the mother of invention. fear does focus the mind. i think that the events of 911 and the large number of terrorist activities at various places around the world and the recognition that the lefality of weapons today is different. it changes our margin of error. the threat of dead and the prospect that this country could end up for the first time with a generation that had fewer opportunities and less prospects is a serious problem. i think it registers on people. it is -- that amount of debt is -- it can't be sustained. it is rushing. it will change the lives of the

next generation if we don't see side and resolve that we are going to do something about it. i don't know -- in life, there is a tipping point. where it is? nobody knows. you can't predict it. if today we've got something in the mid-40s percent of the american people receiving from the federal government and not giving, not participating, it's the benefits of our national defense and the benefits of the things the federal government does but pays no federal taxes, one has to worry that they might have a pattern as we've seen in other countries of supporting people for public office who will promise more and if they do, then they will get more and

more means more debt and larger deficits and less prospects for the next generation. so where is that tipping point? is it 45%? is it 50%? where is it? i don't know but i think that the -- that we have to be realistic about it, that the conservative, intellectual tradition in this country has not been static. it has evolved. it is not likely to stay static in terms of the mix of reasons that people support that movement, that tradition and i also think that it is inevitable that it will ebb and flow. all i can say is that as a conservative, i think that we have to recognize --