RUSH: Let me ask you this question. You've been in the private sector and you've had plenty of 
public service in various positions in our government, and you've devoted your life largely to 
public service, and you're very much aware of our representative republic and democratic process 
here. We have people in the country who have been attempting, ever since shortly after the war 
with Iraq commenced, that are trying to gin up as many anti-war support amongst the American 
population as possible. Yet here you are as a member of this administration with a stated goal 
where Iraq and the war on terror is concerned. You have to be aware of it anti-war opinion of 
those in the country who have it and you're aware of the people who are trying to foment it and 
make it larger. How do you as a public servant square the attitude of the anti-war people if you 
think it's a large group of people with what are your stated goals and what the president stated 
goals are? How do you put those two together and end up formulating a policy and sticking to it?

SECRETARY RUMSFELD: That's a very important question, and I guess only someone who's rooted in 
the history of our country, I think, could accept the kinds of comments that are being made -- 
and if we recognize that the same kinds of criticism that occurred in the Revolutionary War and 
World War I and World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, it's not new. There have always 
been people who have opposed wars. Wars are terrible things. On the other hand, if every time 
there were critics and opponents to war, we wouldn't have won the Revolutionary War and we 
wouldn't have been involved in World War I or II, and if we had we would have failed, and our 
country would be a totally different place if it existed at all, if every time there were some 
critics that we tossed in the towel. I think we just have to accept it, that people have a right 
to say what they want to say, and to have an acceptance of that and recognize that the terrorists, 
Zarqawi and bin Laden and Zawahiri, those people have media committees.

They are actively out there trying to manipulate the press in the United States. They are very 
good at it. They're much better at (laughing) managing those kinds of things than we are, and we 
have to recognize that we're not going to lose any battles out in the global war on terror out in 
Iraq or Afghanistan. The center of gravity of that war is right here, and in the capital of the 
United States of America and other Western capitals, in London, they're trying. It's a test of 
wills, and what's at stake for our country is our way of life. They want to strike at the very 
essence what we are. We're free people, and our task in government, by golly, is to help protect 
the American people from people who killed 3,000 people here on September 11th and killed people 
in London and Madrid and Bali, and country after country around the world who have no problems 
beheading people and murdering innocent men, women and children.