Rumsfeld On Meet The Press: The War On Iraq And The War On Terror Are The Same

This is from the November 2, 2003 program of Meet the Press.
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Rumsfeld: The War On Iraq And The War On Terror Are The Same
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Tim Russert:
“How do you respond to those who suggest that the War On Terror should have been focused on Al Queda and that the resources that are now applied to Iraq are misapplied. That Saddam was not the threat that he was presented as by the Administration, and that the war should have focused on Osama Bin Laden and Al Queda.”
Donald Rumsfeld:
“Tim, we said from the outset that there are several terrorist networks that have global reach and that there were several countries that were harboring terrorists that have global reach. We weren’t going into Iraq when we were hit on September 11th, and the question is ‘well, what do you do about that?’ If you know there are terrorists and you know there’s terrorist states. Iraq’s been a terrorist state for decades. And you know there are countries harboring terrorists. We believe, correctly I think, that the only way to deal with it is (stops) You can’t just hunker down and hope they won’t hit you again. You simply have to take the battle to them. And we have been consistently working on the Al Queda network. We’ve captured a large number of those folks. Captured or killed. Just like we’ve now captured or killed a large number of the top 55 Saddam Hussein loyalists.”

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