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Rumsfeld Tells Troops to 'Expect the Unexpected'
Wednesday, February 20, 2002
By Jim Garamone
American Forces Press Service

"You are the people who stand on the very front line between freedom and fear. You stand against an evil that cannot be appeased, cannot be ignored and it must certainly not be allowed to win. And you are doing a magnificent job."

WASHINGTON -- AFIS
"Expect the unexpected" was the message Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld delivered to airmen Feb. 20 at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev., near Las Vegas.

Rumsfeld held a "town hall meeting" with base personnel in a Nellis hangar. He said current events should teach Americans of the peril of the unexpected.

He told the airmen that when Defense Secretary Robert McNamara went for his confirmation hearing in 1961, no one mentioned Vietnam. That war consumed McNamara's term as secretary.

Similarly, when Vice President Dick Cheney went for his confirmation hearings as defense secretary in 1989, no one mentioned Iraq. A year later that was all anyone spoke about.

During Rumsfeld's confirmation hearing in January 2001, "not one senator mentioned the word 'Afghanistan,'" he said. "Not one senator, nor I, mentioned Al Qaeda. And here we are.

"We have to recognize that it is not possible to know every conceivable threat that can be posed against our country, friends, allies or deployed forces," he said. "We have to recognize the kinds of capabilities that exist and deal with those capabilities wherever they happen to come from."
(More: DoD News Source)
2002 © The United States Department of Defense.

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