*EPF407 03/18/2004
Rumsfeld Confident of Iraq's Chance to Be Democracy
(Defense secretary criticizes media coverage of Iraq) (590)

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says he is confident that Iraq has a chance to become a functioning democracy.

During a March 16 radio interview with radio station WPHT of Philadelphia, Rumsfeld's interviewer asked whether U.S. military action in Iraq may prompt a future election of an anti-American government. Rumsfeld replied: "Well, you know, there are not a lot of democracies in that part of the world, and one would hope that the result of this will be a democracy of some kind. It'll be an Iraqi-type government, not a U.S. model or a U.K. model or any other country. It has to be an Iraqi approach, and time will tell. But thus far, if one looks at the ... interim constitution they've fashioned, one has to admire it, respect it.... So I've got confidence that they have a chance at this. Of course, it took us a long time to get our constitution, and it didn't happen in a year. It took from 1776 to 1789."

Rumsfeld also interviewed with WTN Radio of Nashville, Tennessee on March 16. Asked to identify the greatest change since his earlier tenure as defense secretary(1975-77), Rumsfeld said, "What's changed the most ... is the media. I mean, it's now 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It's continuous. You are constantly being pressed by this or that or the other thing, relevant or irrelevant, accurate, not accurate."

Asked about press accounts that he came into office looking for an excuse to attack Iraq, and used the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, to do so, Rumsfeld said, "[I]t's nonsense. If there's anyone who recognizes that war is the ... absolute last resort, it's Don Rumsfeld and President Bush. ... The United [Nations] passed some 17 resolutions, which were defied by Saddam Hussein. The president gave him every opportunity, and it was Saddam Hussein who chose war. He could have done what Libya is doing right now and opened up his country ... but he didn't. He defied the United Nations and he made a poor choice."

The interviewer asked the secretary why Iraq's terror connections to Hamas, Hezbollah, and their harboring of Abu Nidal and Abu Abbas has not received more media attention.

Former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein "was publicly giving $25,000 to the families of every suicide bomber [in Israel]. And why doesn't it get out? ... [W]hy doesn't it get out that in Iraq today the schools are open, there's a central bank, there's a new currency, the hospitals are open, 1,200 clinics are open?," Rumsfeld asked rhetorically, and continued, "The number of automobiles ...(and) satellite television [dishes] is booming. And all one ever reads (in the press) is hand wringing. It's because it's not convenient, I suppose, for people and it probably doesn't sell newspapers quite as readily as bad news."

Asked to identify a key message capturing the current situation in Iraq that is being missed by major broadcast networks, Rumsfeld replied: "[E]very member of the [House of Representatives] or the Senate that I've talked to who's been over there -- and there have been over 100, 120 of them that have been over to Iraq and Afghanistan to see what's happening -- have come back stunned by how much better the situation is than they believed when they went over, from what they'd seen in the press and the media."

(Distributed by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)

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