“It's very difficult to compete with people who lie consistently. Bin laden and Zawahiri and Zarqawi have media committees and they sit down and they plan how they're going to manipulate the press, because they know in a free system the press is free and whatever lie they can come up with gets printed. Then we have to go out and figure out what the truth is and try to nail it down. There's no penalty for bin Laden and Zawahiri lying, but any time we say something that's inaccurate, because we go too fast or too quick, then there's a penalty for that. So we have to take time.
Right now there was an attack in Baghdad, north of Baghdad recently, in the last few days, and the terrorists who were firing at all of the Iraqi forces that went in to conduct that attack are putting out lies and claiming that it was this and it was that, and our people then have to go in and try to precisely figure out what took place.
What they found in there was when they pulled up to this target that they'd been watching for days, they started getting fired at from houses all around the target. Then they got inside the target, these Iraqi Security Forces for the most part. They got inside and they found rocket-propelled grenades, AK-47s, IEDs, they found a hostage bound and gagged and taped in the basement. This was a hostage-taking ring, it was a bomb-making factory, and the press is reporting what the terrorists have said, that it was a mosque and that these people were praying and that type of thing.
Now that hurts our side, and when I gave us a low grade it's because we haven't figured out how we compete effectively against liars...”
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld
March 28, 2006
(Taken from DoD News Transcript)
Read in full the Radio Interview with Secretary Rumsfeld, on the 830 AM WCCO Radio Talk Show HERE...
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