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What's Up at the Pentagon?
Tuesday, February 5, 2002
By Linda D. Kozaryn
American Forces Press Service

"It is physically impossible to defend at every time in every location against every conceivable technique of terrorism," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld stressed. Therefore, if your goal is to stop terrorism, you you must take the battle to the terrorists.

WASHINGTON -- AFIS
Defense-based capabilities. Transformation. Force-sizing construct. Asymmetric threats. These are some of the latest buzzwords at the Pentagon.

What do they mean?

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld used these terms during a Feb. 4 interview with Jim Lehrer on PBS. The secretary talked about transforming the military, the president's fiscal 2003 budget request, the war on terrorism and other defense issues.

When Rumsfeld used the Pentagon buzzwords, Lehrer asked the secretary to explain. For example, when Rumsfeld said, "We have moved from a threat-based strategy to a capabilities-based strategy," Lehrer asked, "What does that mean?"

Rumsfeld explained.

"It means that instead of deciding you're going to look at a threat in North Korea or a threat in Iraq or a threat somewhere else (like) the old Soviet Union, and fashion your force to fit that, what you do is look at the capabilities that exist in the world -- chemical, biological, nuclear capabilities, cyber attacks, that type of thing. And you say to yourself, it's not possible to know precisely where the threat will come from or when, but you can know what nature that threat might be and what capabilities we need to deal with that."

Transformation, according to Rumsfeld, "is not an event, it's a process. It involves a mind set, an attitude, a culture." He said it involves new ways of thinking, new ways of operating, new ways of doing business.
(More: DoD News Source)
2002 © The United States Department of Defense.

Dan