world would not be a better place with assad gone because he and his father contributed to a lot of american deaths and terrorist acts around the world. but you know, who knows. i asked an expert on the region not long ago and he said he's going to be in there longer than we think and less than he thinks. >> i saw your hand up. >> sir, you mentioned earlier -- >> are you going to ask an easier question? >> i promise. >> no computers. >> but you said defense spending used to be 10% of our gdp. today it's a mere 4.4%. >> something like, 4.67. >> with the looming budget deficit of i think it's 15 point something trillion now, you

know, eventually going to hit crisis mode if it's not dealt with in a few years. how tough a sell is going to be that we need to maintain defense spending or we ought to even increase it. >> they have already cut some $400 billion over the decade. they announced a second 500 billion so you're pushing a trillion. and you could not balance the budget. it isn't where the problem is. the problem is entitlements. if we've gone from 10% of gdp 4 plus percent going for defense, the idea that the defense department is the problem of the debt and the deficit is just gross misinformation. it isn't. is there waste in the department, sure, any big bureaucracy. if you want to do something in the department of defense. i don't know what we've got but

between 800 and 900,000 civilian employees. we have 10,000 lawyers. in the department of defense. where's the gasp? 10,000 lawyers in the -- it's amaze -- it's kind of like gulliver. most of you probably never heard of gulliver. he was a great big guy and they put little threads over gulliver and no one thread bothered but in the end he couldn't get up the civilian employees a lot of wonderful employees, don't get me wrong. but if you want something done in the department of defense, you go to a military person. go to a military person. why, because you can bring him in and send him away when the

job's done. if he doesn't do a good job, get somebody else. the alternative is go to a contractor. sign a contract, bring him in. contract ends, he goes out. you can't do that with civilian employees, they are there forever. you can't hire them fast, can't fire them fast, you can't move them around. civilian managers have four, five, six, different systems. they have to manage. in one department. it is the unions have control of the civilian population in that department to the point where people f. they want something done, go to a military person or a contractor. now is that waste? you bet. there is waste in there. how much i don't know. is there other waste, of course. and there are billions that can be saved. my recollection is there is smog like while i was there about $12 billion. in the congressional add-ons that were put in that we didn't want for things that had nothing to do with the department of defense. when i was there i decided to

rebalance our forces. we still had air force capability in ice land. they were there to track the russian bombers. what were they called, bear bombers. we were spending $233 million a year in iceland 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 iceland. 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 artillery piece, and the outcry was unbelievable. on capitol hill, in the army. can you imagine at the beginning of the war on terror a 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 the money into precision weapons. i don't know an artillery person who doesn't agree that i did. but for 24 months 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 was there a concern in the administration after 9/11 that limited war. 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 define 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 a comfortable 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 $265,000 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 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 are backing less hospita e 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 should we be doing? what are the political implications? >> well, you have a country that has -- calls the united states the great satan and the evilest 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 country 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. i've been 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

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 yourself 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 responsible israeli leader getting up in the 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 european countries. >> the european countries are below 2%. nato, if they take the united states out, 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 of their doing anything to increase their defense capabilities are modest. where does that leave. >> 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 have the ability to would with

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 some sort of linkage 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 any possible thought on what the leadership's course of action would be? >> 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 alowite 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. their view of the worlds. will will will will will will will fr ever 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 to go accept 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 judgment. 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 few where we have all three. that is why i made my point. i think what's important is not our countries exactly like we are because there are so few that are, but which way are they moving?

are they moving in a direction -- how can we encourage them to move toward freer economic political or 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 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 there and 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. a no one person decides it, not 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 don't have any idea, if i were him, i wouldn't have told a soul where i was. and that person would have been doing everything i needed done, but i would not have been telling a lot of pakistanis. and what is the common view in america? i don't know, maybe it's right, common view is come on. 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.

and let's cut off aid to pakistan. when i see it, i will believe some evidence. until then, i don't know what is going on up the potomac river from the pentagon. anyone could be in there. how many years did it take to find this bolger. they finally find him out in california after decades in our own country.

it's hard work and it's difficult, but we're doing the things that they need to right now. the egyptians got mad and people in the congress saying, cut off military aid to egypt. my goodness, the ones that know what they want is the muslim brotherhood and the salibas. i think it's hard in our country

because we get worked up and we get worked up in the press how would you like to see a failed state? all those radicals with an intelligent organization, with taliban relationships and nuclear weapons. imagine where we would be. >> our time is rap bididly comio an end. i'd like to continue much longer. i could do this for hours with

you. we talked about the fact that with traditional lifts and libertarian conservatives really to fight the soviet union have come to an end. is it islam, radical islam? and will the movement dissipate? where do you see it happening? >> as you suggest, the coalition turned out not to be permanent.