eMediaMillWorks
Sunday, May 6, 2001

Following is the transcript from NBC's Meet the Press with comments by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on the Bush administration's proposal for changes in U.S. military strategy and Sen. John Kerrey (D-MA) with the Democrats' response.

SPEAKERS: TIM RUSSERT, HOST, NBC MEET THE PRESS

DONALD RUMSFELD, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE

U.S. SENATOR JOHN KERRY (D-MA)

RUSSERT: Our issues this Sunday: Can we develop, can we afford an effective missile defense system?

How dangerous is it to have strained relations with the Chinese?

Why is Saddam Hussein shooting at American pilots like never before?

With us, the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld. And with the Democratic view, a potential contender for the 2004 presidential nomination, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts.

With us in his first appearance as George W. Bush's secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld. Welcome back to Meet the Press.

RUMSFELD: Thank you, Tim.

RUSSERT: Let's go right to it. Missile defense system. The president gave a speech the other day and said, we have to protect ourselves against rogue nations, we have to protect our allies against rogue nations, we have to protect ourselves against accidental launch.

How much would it cost for a complete missile defense system to protect us from all of that?

RUMSFELD: Well, it's impossible to know at the moment because, during the past period of years, no R&D or testing or demonstrations have gone forward on anything that would have been outside the range of the ballistic missile treaty. And because of that, we're now just starting that process of looking at those things on an unconstrained basis that would involve anything that was mobile, for example, anything that was at sea, anything that was in the air, anything that involved a space sensor, for example.

So we are at the beginning of that process. And one will--some of those things will work, some won't. And what we'll do is stop the things that won't and move forward on the things that will, and at that point we'll be able to know more about actual deployment.

But what we do know already is, the amount of money in the budget, in the past and in the budget going forward, is a very small fraction of the defense budget, which--and the defense budget's about 3 percent of the gross national product. So it's a relatively small amount of money at this stage.

RUSSERT: But the American people should know that if we have a vast, effective missile defense system, it's going to be expensive, several hundred billion dollars.

RUMSFELD: Well, I don't know why you say ``vast.'' The purpose of it is to be able to handle and deal with a relatively limited number of ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction for the purposes which you outlined.

RUSSERT: Well, but, if you want to prevent any accidental launch from China or Russia or any rogue nation launch or a ship coming close to our shores and trying to drop something on us, it would have to be pretty extensive.

RUMSFELD: Well, if you think of the power of weapons of mass destruction and the damage they can bring, and if you think of the problem of proliferation in the world--you know, since the end of the Cold War, people have relaxed. And we've seen all of this trading among every nation and even among the rogue states, are trading ballistic-missile technologies and people who are systems integrators, for example.

And those weapons are powerful. They can do an enormous amount of damage, and there are some people who contend that vulnerability is a strategy. I cannot imagine getting up in the morning as president of the United States and saying, ``American people, I've decided that my strategy for the future is to be vulnerable,'' notwithstanding the fact that weapons of mass destruction are coming into the hands of people such as Saddam Hussein, who was mentioned in your lead-in here.

And I think it's a responsibility of the president to do exactly what President Bush has done, and announce that he's going to talk to our allies, he's going to talk to Russia, he's going to talk to China, he's going to talk to the various interested parties in the world, and explain that it's time to move past the Cold War thinking of mutual assured destruction and move towards the 21st century.

RUSSERT: If Russia says, ``I'm sorry, we will not go along with this,'' will we then unilaterally abrogate the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in order to build missile defense?

RUMSFELD: The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty was designed to have an arrangement between the United States and a nation that's gone, the Soviet Union, to not build missile defenses, in effect.

RUSSERT: Correct.

RUMSFELD: And here we are in a world where there are nations getting ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction, and there's a need to build ballistic-missile defenses.

The assumption that Russia will ultimately not agree, I think, is not a good one. I've noted the response that Russia has made thus far, and it's been quite muted.

RUSSERT: But if they didn't, we have no problem withdrawing from the treaty?

RUMSFELD: The president has indicated that he believes that the threat of rogue nations, ballistic missile and weapons of mass destruction is such that he wants to have a defensive system. And that's why he's setting out on this consultation process with our allies and with Russia...

RUSSERT: Even if it means withdrawing from the treaty?

RUMSFELD: The treaty, of course, has a provision for that.

RUSSERT: Correct.

RUMSFELD: And the president has indicated that he wants to talk and try to establish a new framework. And that's why he also mentioned that he believes it's possible--and I agree--to reduce the numbers of nuclear weapons that the United States has.

RUSSERT: If we're willing...

RUMSFELD: And it's a new construct, it's a new framework, a new arrangement that needs to be fashioned.

RUSSERT: If we are willing to share our missile defense with Russia, would we be willing to share it with China?

RUMSFELD: The word ``share'' needs a little definition. There is no question but that it's possible for the United States, as we move forward, to cooperate with our allies and even to cooperate with Russia on various aspects of it, warning and the like. How that might evolve, when it might evolve, in what regard it might evolve is still open. But it certainly is something that could be discussed.

RUSSERT: China, according to our intelligence estimates, has 20 nuclear weapons. If, in fact, we build a missile defense, our own people tell us they may build as many as 800, because they do not want to be in any way neutralized by any missile shield we would have. So this would encourage them to develop weapons, not decrease them.

RUMSFELD: The word ``shield'' is unfortunate, it seems to me. The idea that this is going to be a shield to protect the United States or protect major chunks of the world, I think, is a little beyond the reach of this.

This is to deal with relatively small numbers of ballistic missiles. It is a threat to no one unless somebody intends to use ballistic missiles against somebody else. There's no way a defense can be said to be threatening.

Second, China's going to do what it's going to do. We know that. They know that. What we do with respect to ballistic-missile defense, it seems to me, is not going to affect one whit what the People's Republic of China does. They're going to develop additional weapons. They've said that, they've been writing that, they are doing that. Doesn't have anything to do with ballistic-missile defense.

RUSSERT: Is Russia an ally?

RUMSFELD: Of ours?

RUSSERT: Yes.

RUMSFELD: No. Russia is a nation that has a connection with NATO, a new, recently fashioned connection. It's the--Russia is a country that is important. It's a country that we want to deal with. It's important--it's a country that is not our enemy. We do not get up in the morning and worry about a tank attack across the North German Plain. We don't get up in the morning and worry about the Soviet Union launching ballistic missiles against the United States. It's a different situation. They have an elected president.

RUSSERT: Is China our enemy?

RUMSFELD: No, China's not our enemy. China is...

RUSSERT: Our adversary?

RUMSFELD: The president has characterized exactly what China is, and China is an important nation that we want to bring into the trade in the world. It's a country that--what its direction will be, it's not written, it's unclear. It is clearly a dictatorship, it's a Communist dictatorship, by their own testimony. It doesn't have a free press. It has many differences from us, and it's not clear how they're going to emerge into the world. We hope it's without grinding gears.

RUSSERT: North Korea announced that they will continue halting any missile tests until 2003. Will this now prompt you to resume negotiations and discussions with North Korea at the highest levels?

RUMSFELD: That's up to the president, and he will be reviewing and has been reviewing North Korean policy. I noted that--in that or a similar article--that North Korea also announced that it intended to continue selling missile technologies and ballistic missiles throughout the world, which is notably unhelpful.

RUSSERT: One of the issues in Russia is that there is enough material to make 60,000 to 80,000 weapons. Sam Nunn and Richard Lugar had a bill passed which provided money for Russia to deal with that problem. The administration has come forward now and cut that by $117 million.

RUMSFELD: There have been, I think, one and possibly two reviews of how well that program has been operating. Certainly, it has been the policy of our country, and in my view properly so, to attempt to assist in seeing that nuclear materials in Russia are handled in a safe way, so that they don't proliferate.

The details of how the program is operating, and the extent to which the funds that the United States is providing our actually going towards that goal is the issue. And it's important that we see that it go towards that goal and not go towards other aspects of Soviet...

RUSSERT: You don't think the program's working?

RUMSFELD: I'm not an expert on that, and I do know that there are instances where people have demonstrated that U.S. funds have not found the mark that was intended by the Congress and by the administration.

RUSSERT: Let me turn to China. Will we fly our plane out of China?

RUMSFELD: Well, I certainly hope so. It flew in, and airplanes are supposed to fly. The idea of pulling it apart and taking it out in some other form is not a happy one.

RUSSERT: And humiliating.

RUMSFELD: Oh, it isn't a matter of humiliation. It's--first of all, we have to find out if it's flyable. And we've had an assessment team in there, they've taken a look at it. At the moment, the preliminary view is that it may be possible to repair it sufficiently to fly it out, but that's not clear yet. We'll know later this week.

RUSSERT: Will you insist it fly out if it can be flown?

RUMSFELD: The president will make judgments on that as we go along. And in my view, he's made very good judgments with respect to this entire matter. But I think that certainly it would be logical it would be flown out.

RUSSERT: Since the plane landed on April 1, we have not had any more surveillance flights along the coast of China. When will they resume? Or have we been scared off?

RUMSFELD: We have certainly not been scared off of anything. The surveillance and reconnaissance flights--and I'm delighted you didn't call them spy flights, because they are not spy flights. They have U.S. Navy right across the airplane. They're not traipsing around with trench coats and some dark glasses on. They're very public and fly outside the territorial limits of the countries where they surveil.

RUSSERT: When will they resume?

RUMSFELD: Eight, 10, 12 countries, 15 countries in the world fly surveillance and reconnaissance flights.

We don't discuss the timing of...

RUSSERT: But they will resume?

RUMSFELD: Oh, absolutely. The president said that, and I have said that.

RUSSERT: Bill Clinton, the former president, said he was, quote, ``encouraged to go'' to Hong Kong by this administration. Is that true?

RUMSFELD: I have no knowledge of that.

RUSSERT: Would he be helpful in Hong Kong?

RUMSFELD: I have no knowledge of anything about it.

RUSSERT: Let me turn to an issue you were involved in this week, and that is whether or not we should have military exchanges with the Chinese.

This is how New York Times reported it: ```The office of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ordered the suspension of military exchanges and contacts with the Chinese armed forces and then abruptly reversed the order today after the White House objected,' Pentagon officials said.''

The L.A. Times went on: ``The Pentagon said the original policy directive was written by a Rumsfeld aide, Christopher Williams, on the basis of a misunderstanding of the Secretary's intent. But the Pentagon official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the issue, said Rumsfeld had intended to break off all contacts between the two militaries.''

And Senator John Warner said he had spoken to you directly about suspending all contact.

RUMSFELD: Senator Warner, I believe, later corrected it and indicated he had not spoken to me about it, which we had not have a chance to talk about it. We had talked about military-to-military contacts.

First, let me say this. And I'm glad you raised it. Chris Williams is an enormously talented individual, and I would dearly love to have him come work full time in the Pentagon. I'd hire him any place, anytime, anywhere.

We had a discussion. We left the discussion, and he went off with one interpretation. I had the view that we would be doing it on a case-by-case basis. He issued a memorandum. It is every bit as much my fault. I was in the room. It's my responsibility, and I think to lay a lot of blame on Chris is certainly not fair.

My intention all along and Chris' was to surface as many of these relationships as exist and then look at them on a case-by-case basis so that some could go forward. For example, you'd certainly want the assessment team to be able to go in. For example, you don't want to suspend everything. You want to look at them on a case-by-case basis.

RUSSERT: But, an aide of yours sent a memo to the Joint Chiefs of Staff without you signing off on it?

RUMSFELD: He came out of a meeting and issued a memorandum I had not seen, and that is not unusual in the building. It is possible for people, senior people--and he has been acting in charge of the policy place because we have only one--by then we had only one confirmed person besides myself in the building. He has been acting in the policy role, and he's done a superb job and he is a first-rate individual.

RUSSERT: Let me show you how the Weekly Standard responded to this, and this is a conservative publication. And here's what they wrote: ``The adults make a mess. So the adults are in charge, and yet our policy on the most important strategic question of the coming decade--how to deal with the rising power of China--grows more incoherent with each passing week. Every apparent move in the direction of a tougher and more realistic policy towards Beijing is followed almost instantaneously by a hedge or retreat back toward the policies of the Clinton administration. Last week's flip flop on the question of military-to-military exchanges with China was an especially striking example of the new team's fumbling and also of its willingness to hang loyal subordinates out to dry.''

And they point to a conversation that you had with Condoleezza Rice on Wednesday morning where she said, ``Rescind this.''

RUMSFELD: That is flat not true. Condoleezza Rice never indicated that, and anyone who says it is wrong. Bill Kristol is a terrific guy and a good friend, and sometimes he overstates for emphasis. And I know he'll be here later to defend himself.

The thing to keep in mind is that mistakes get made, and this is trivial. This is not a big deal. And what happens when a mistake is made in the newspaper, it's corrected the next morning.

When I became aware that this memorandum had gone out, I said, my goodness, I've been doing it on a case-by-case basis. That's my understanding with the president, as to how I was going to do it. And it's the proper way to do it.

It's not business as usual with China. I have been disapproving a series of contacts since I have been Secretary of Defense, and reviewing them now. I just think that it's a mountain out of a molehill.

RUSSERT: Let me turn to something that the president said about Taiwan and give you a chance to explain it.

RUMSFELD: And to the extent I made a mistake, it is not the first one, and I suspect it will not be the last one.

RUSSERT: This is what the president had said in a series of interviews on his first 100 days when asked about defending Taiwan with the full force of American military: ``whatever it took to help Taiwan defend herself.'' Whatever it took. That would include nuclear weapons, if need be, correct?

RUMSFELD: Well, look, the president said what he said, and he knows what he said, and he believes what he said, and he meant what he said.

And what he meant was, look, we ought not to have a lot of ambiguity about things. It's fine to have sometimes to have some ambiguity. But we have had a policy for years. In fact, there's an act of Congress that says, the United States will assist Taiwan in maintaining the kind of strength so that it will not become attractive for anyone to try to impose force on them.

And the president was letting the world know that he intended to, during his administration, see that Taiwan was sufficiently strong, that it would not become an attractive target for force.

RUSSERT: But ``whatever it took'' is for the first time an American president said, ``We will use nuclear weapons if need be to defend Taiwan.''

RUMSFELD: Well Tim, you're putting words in his mouth. He said what he said, and he meant it.

RUSSERT: ``Whatever.'' ``Whatever'' is a big word. ``Whatever it took.''

RUMSFELD: You know, it's always possible to take something and carry it to some sort of an extreme.

He let the world know, and I think usefully so, that the United States recognizes that the arrangement that has existed does exist, and that we do not want to see force used to resolve the issues between Taiwan and the People's Republic of China.

RUSSERT: If need be, what will we use to repel the Chinese if they attempted to invade Taiwan?

RUMSFELD: I don't want to go on beyond the president's words. I think he said what he said, and he meant it.

RUSSERT: Let me show you what Jim Hoagland wrote in The Washington Post about Saddam Hussein: ``While the Bush administration struggles through a policy reviewin Iraq and the Persian Gulf, Saddam Hussein has concluded his own assessment with characteristic speed and brutishness. He wants an American pilot's head, and he wants it now.

``Far from backing off after U.S. war planes bombed air defenses near Baghdad on February 16, Saddam's rocketeers have significantly escalated their fire on American and British aircraft flying routine patrols over Northern Iraq, according to U.S. military and intelligence reports.

``The totals show that Iraq gunners fired twice as many missiles in March as they did in February. In the first four months of 2001, they have shot at American planes five times as often as they did through the year 2000.''

And Hoagland reports Saddam now has a cash bounty. He's told his people there's a cash reward if you shoot down an American pilot.

What is going on?

RUMSFELD: Well, what's going on is Saddam Hussein has an inflated view of his role in the world and in the Middle East, and he is clearly trying to become a factor in using the Arab-Israeli problems to develop support on the street in Arab countries.

And what he needs to do is to fan the flames because it works to his advantage, and he is doing that. He is fanning the flames, he's trying to stir up trouble in other Arab countries in the Strait to make life difficult and to oppose Israel, not because he cares about Israel or the people in the street, but because he cares about sustaining himself in power and asserting his influence over his neighbors.

I'd have to go back and check the number of firings, but ever since I've been watching this, he has continuously been firing at American aircraft and British aircraft that fly in the Northern Zone.

RUSSERT: What do we do? What do we do if Saddam...

RUMSFELD: And you're correct. He would dearly love to shoot down a British or an American airplane.

RUSSERT: And if he does, if he shoots down an American pilot, what do we do?

RUMSFELD: Tim, I'm not in the ``what if'' business. The United States of America clearly would respond as we have been responding to these attacks. We have gone in and responded against radars, we've responded against anti-aircraft, we've responded against missile sites.

RUSSERT: But you are the secretary of defense.

RUMSFELD: Yes.

RUSSERT: What is your message to Saddam Hussein this morning?

RUMSFELD: The message is, obviously, that Saddam Hussein is imposing a dictatorial rule over his people. He is denying his people the things that normal people have in this world of ours, and he is doing it for his own personal self-aggrandizement and to the benefit of the handful of elites that sustain him in office.

And my personal view is--and our policy has been--that we are going to contain him where he is, we are going to continue to fly the flights in various ways in the northern and southern no-watch zones, and to the extent he fires at allied aircraft, obviously, allied aircraft have been and will continue to respond.

RUSSERT: Will you get the $10 billion more in defense money this year that you need?

RUMSFELD: I don't know. I have not gone to the president as yet. He wanted to wait until after some of the studies had been completed and until the tax bill was behind us, and we're going to be discussing that over the coming weeks.

RUSSERT: But you need more money.

RUMSFELD: We do.

Unfortunately, there's been a rhythm with the Pentagon that they've always budgeted to get a supplemental, and that's been going on for three, four or five years. And there's just no way that you can stop that in one year. You have to plan to stop it.

So I would hope we'll get a supplemental this year, which the president has indicated we will. What size is open. And then we can budget in a way, in '02 and '03, that we won't need a supplemental, is my hope, unless there's a real emergency or a war or a conflict or something.

RUSSERT: A lot of concerns this week, when the United Nations basically kicked the United States off a human rights panel.

This is how it was reported in the paper, and let me put it up there, by The Washington Post: ``U.S. Loses Seat on Human Rights Body: Defeat Laid to Irritation at White House Policies. The United States lost a seat on the UN Commission on Human Rights today at the first time since it was established in 1947. Diplomats said the vote was a sign of international irritation over the Bush administration's stands on global warming, missile defense and AIDS medication.''

Are we going it alone and losing contact and influence with our allies and being punished by a world irritated by this attitude?

RUMSFELD: Well, I can't speak to the global warming or the AIDS issue. I think missile defense would be incorrect, because in fact what we've seen is a generally quite positive--I just read what India said about missile defense and Australia and the UK.

RUSSERT: Why did they vote us off the commission?

RUMSFELD: I'm going to come to that.

They obviously did something that was notably unwise. Sudan on the human rights commission and the U.S. off tells more about the people who cast the votes and the judgment that was used than it does about the United States.

To the extent--let me go back to the bigger question that you asked. With the end of the Soviet Union, the United States is the power in the world. There was a great deal of gratitude in the world when the United States was the nation principally assisting with our allies in preventing the spread of Communism and the containment of the Soviet Union.

With the Soviet Union gone, that gratitude is gone, that appreciation is gone. And people who never believed the United States had a monopoly on all political wisdom or all economic wisdom or all cultural wisdom now don't feel grateful for the role the United States was playing to the same extent, and so they're perfectly willing to express their views.

And I think that that's a characteristic of the world we're going to be living in, and that's fine. We don't have a monopoly on all wisdom in the world, and we can live in that world very successfully.

RUSSERT: Bob Kerrey, a former senator, has talked...

RUMSFELD: Right. And I must say, you've said he's going to give the Democratic view. Bob Kerrey's going to give his personal perspective.

RUSSERT: That's John Kerry.

RUMSFELD: I mean John Kerry.

RUSSERT: I'm talking about Bob Kerrey...

RUMSFELD: Oh, Bob, OK.

RUSSERT: ... the former senator, talked about his activities in Vietnam. People have suggested there should be an investigation by the Pentagon into his activities and perhaps an investigation into the awarding of the bronze star. Will either of those be done?

RUMSFELD: That remains to be seen, and because it could end up on my desk, it's clearly not something I could discuss.

RUSSERT: Before you go, let me show you the tape of somebody you might recognize.

(LAUGHTER)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RUMSFELD: What's important is to appreciate that you can have varying degrees of relationships with other countries. But it's important for the United States of America to maintain the kind of strength that will provide and contribute to a stable world.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RUSSERT: Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 25 years ago almost to the day. Message is the same.

RUMSFELD: No, it isn't. It's a different world.

RUSSERT: Thank you very much for joining us.

Coming next, a Democratic response from Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts. And we'll look back to his comments as a leader of the Vietnam veterans against the war, 30 years ago, April 18, 1971, he appeared right here on Meet the Press. All coming up after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

RUSSERT: Senator John Kerry, welcome.

KERRY: Good morning.

RUSSERT: You just heard the secretary of defense say that it's a new world, and we need a missile defense system, even if it means withdrawing from a treaty we had entered in with the Soviet Union some 25 years ago.

Why not have a missile defense system to defend our country and our allies from accidental launches or launches by rogue nations against us?

KERRY: Tim, can I begin by just saying that this is not something that I hope will divide into a Democrat view, Republican view. It's really about what will make our country safe.

This is one of the most important debates we'll have, and the question is: How do we advance the interests of our nation? And the interests of our nation--I think, and many of us believe--are obviously integrally tied to the interests of everybody else on the planet. What makes the world safer?

Now, I believe very much that we should have a very limited, extraordinarily transparent, highly verifiable and mutually agreed-upon defense system that has the ability to shoot down the outside potential of some unauthorized or accidental launch or, indeed, the really distant possibility of a rogue nation firing a missile at us. No president could possibly say to the American people, ``We might have had this technology, and I didn't pursue it or I didn't put in place the strongest potential safety mechanism for our citizens.''

What the administration is doing, however, is considerably different from that and, indeed, in my judgment, very threatening. And their language is confused. I mean, if you listened to the secretary of defense a moment ago, as you did, you heard him talk about mutual assured destruction, how we need to move away from that, and how, indeed, we need to change the equation and a new framework.

Tim, if you have a limited defense that can only shoot down an accidental, unauthorized launch or a rogue nation missile, you do not get rid of mutual assured destruction.

You cannot. What's more, if you move unilaterally to put a defense system in place and people who might be your adversaries aren't part of it or mistrust it or misread it, they will do what happened through the Cold War for 50 years. They will interpret their threat perception and their interests according to their needs, and they will respond.

And that is precisely why we put the ABM Treaty in place in the first place, and that's why it would be dangerous for the world, dangerous for America, make us less secure, to unilaterally abrogate that treaty and simply move on to put out some uninterpretable defense system.

RUSSERT: How much do you believe it would cost for an effective missile defense system?

KERRY: Well, we already spent $68 billion, and we have almost nothing to show for it. We've had the last two tests fail. The current budget is going to be tripled, it's going from $4.4 billion to about $12 billion. And what I think is very disturbing to many of us is, it's trying to move rapidly into space, Tim. They're talking about a space-based laser.

I think the president would be better advised to offer to the world the potential of a treaty that says, we will only use space for peaceful purposes.

And I might add, moving into space with weapons, in fact, makes space far less safe than it is today for our communications equipment on which, I might add, the safety of our troops and our current capacities depend. So it is in our interest not to weaponize space.

And, again, I think the administration--where leadership should be offered, Tim--we see Taiwan suddenly heated up. We see China heated up. We've moved away from the Kyoto Treaty. We find ourselves at odds with our allies in the United Nations. We find ourselves with many friends of ours suspicious of our current diplomacy or lack thereof, and we find, therefore, that we've been thrown off the UN Human Rights Commission. Obviously, there are disturbing members of that commission. I don't like the fact that Libya, Sudan, Cuba, et cetera are on it, but that's been a place where we've been able to hold China accountable, and now we've lost it.

RUSSERT: There was once another JFK from Massachusetts, John F. Kennedy, and he said the United States of America should put a man on the moon. Why is it not beyond this country to set that same goal? We will have a missile defense system, no matter where it is, on land, air, sea, space, which will defend this country from any attack by anyone.

KERRY: Well, first of all, Tim, we should indeed, offer America the opportunity to go to the moon in a number of respects. We should do it with respect to our education system. We should guarantee that every child in this country is not at risk at any time during the day. We should have full funding of Head Start. We should guarantee that early childhood education takes place. There are plenty of ways for the United States to be challenged and go to the moon in metaphoric terms.

RUSSERT: But why not security from an attack?

KEERRY: I am for--look, I'm a military guy. I served. I know what it's like to be on the front line and feel abandoned by the strategy as well as by the politicians. And I want a military that is second to nobody on this planet.

I am for a limited mutually-arrived-at missile defense that has the ability without abrogating the ABM Treaty, or with the consent of people because they're working with you, to make us all safer by being able to shoot down a rogue missile or an unauthorized launch.

But, Tim, if you do it unilaterally, if you move simply to break the treaty, you in fact turn defense into offense in the perceptions of your opponents.

For instance, China has 23, 24 missiles today. China knows they can lob those at us and do us injury. We know they can lob at us and do us injury. And neither of us, therefore, wants to do it. That's mutual assured destruction.

If, however, we had the ability to knock down each of China's 23 or 24 missiles, we've completely changed the equation of their perceptions of their inviolatability (ph) and of our force and presence. That means they may sit there and calculate, ``Uh oh, they could now work their will on us with respect to Taiwan. They can do what they want with respect to Southeast Asia, the South China Sea.'' All of these equations are critical to people's judgments.

The entire Cold War was driven by each side's perceptions of what the other was doing with either misunderstanding or with good intent. If we allow that to re-open, we will have an arms race, and we go backwards, and we are less secure.

I'm for a missile defense, as are many of our colleagues, that we research carefully, that we do in conjunction with our allies, where we set up a verifiable structure, know what we're each doing, and where we indeed make the world safer.

But look at the rogue missile issue, Tim. I mean, you know, you don't, in measuring intent, just look at the capacity of nations to lob a missile. You look at their intent. You look at their motive. North Korea to lob a missile at us has far more consequence than it would by attacking our subways with anthrax, by blowing up buildings in this country, by using a cruise missile they could buy on the market illegally and put a warhead on and fire from a rusty tanker in New York Harbor.

RUSSERT: And there's no defense against that?

KERRY: There's not only no defense against that, they can do that without the trace that firing a rogue missile leaves so that they annihilate their nation. You have to measure the levels of threat even as you look at the type of weapons.

RUSSERT: You mentioned you're a military guy. There's been a lot of discussion about Bob Kerrey, your former Democratic colleague in the Senate about his talking about his anguish about what happened in Vietnam.

You were on this program 30 years ago as a leader of the Vietnam veterans against the war. We went back and have an audio tape of that and some still photos, and your comments are particularly timely in this overall discussion of Bob Kerrey. And I'd like for you to listen to those with our audience and then try to put that war into some context.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RUSSERT: Mr. Kerry, you said at one time or another that you think that our policies in Vietnam are tantamount to genocide and that the responsibility lies at all chains of command over there. Do you consider that you personally as a naval officer committed atrocities in Vietnam or crimes punishable by law in this country?

KERRY: There are all kinds of atrocities. And I would have to say that, yes, yes, I committed the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed, in that I took part in shootings in free fire zones; I conducted harassment and interdiction fire; I used 50-caliber machine guns which we were granted and ordered to use, which were our only weapon against people; I took place in search and destroy missions, in the burning of villages.

All of this is contrary to the laws of warfare. All of this is contrary to the Geneva Conventions. And all of this is ordered as a matter of written established policy by the government of the United States from the top down.

And I believe that the men who designed these, the men who designed the free fire zone, the men who ordered us, the men who signed off the air raid strike areas, I think these men, by the letter of the law, the same letter of the law that tried Lieutenant Calley, are war criminals.

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RUSSERT: Thirty years later, do you stand by that?

KERRY: I don't stand by the genocide. I think those were the words of an angry young man. We did not try to do that. But I do stand by the description--I don't even believe there was a purpose served in the word ``war criminal.'' I really don't.

But I stand by the rest of what happened over there, Tim. I mean, you know, we've got to put this war in its right perspective and time helps us do that. I believe very deeply that it was a noble effort to begin with. I signed up. I volunteered. I wanted to go over there and I wanted to win.

It was a noble effort to try to make a country democratic, to try to carry our principles and values to another part of the world. But we misjudged history, we misjudged our own country, we misjudged our strategy. And we fell into a dark place, all of us. And I think we learned that over time.

And I hope the contribution that some of made as veterans was to come back and help people understand that. I think our soldiers served as nobly, on the whole, as in any war, and people need to understand that. There were great sacrifices, great contributions, and they came back to a country that didn't thank the veteran, that didn't--I mean, everything that the veteran gained in the ensuing years, agent orange recognition, post Vietnam stress syndrome recognition, the extension of the GI Bill, the improvement of the VA hospitals--all came from Vietnam veterans themselves, fighting for it. Indeed, even the memorial in Washington came from that.

RUSSERT: By your own comments, Bob Kerrey was not alone in doing the things that he did.

KERRY: Of course, not. And not only that, we, the government, of our country ran an assassination program. I mean, Bill Colby has acknowledged it. We had the Phoenix Program, where they actually went into villages to eliminate the civilian infrastructure of the Viet Cong. Now, you couldn't tell the difference in many cases with who they were, and countless veterans testified 30 years ago to that reality.

And I think, look, there's no excusing shooting children in cold blood or women and killing them in cold blood. There isn't under any circumstances. But we're not asking, you know, nor is Bob Kerrey saying, ``Excuse us for what we did.'' We're asking people to understand the context and forgiveness. And I think the nation needs to understand what the nation put its young in a position to do and move on and take those lessons and apply them to the future.

RUSSERT: The folks who oversaw the war, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger--you do not now, 30 years later, consider them war criminals?

KERRY: No, I think we did things that were tantamount, that certainly violated the laws of war. But I think it was the natural consequence of the Cold War itself. People made decisions based on their perceptions of the world at that time. They were in error. They were judgments of error.

But I think no purpose is served now by going down that road. I think, you know, the rhetoric of youth and of anger can be redeemed by the acts that we put in place after a time to try to move us beyond that. And I think there are great lessons to learn from it. But we would serve no purpose with that now.

But we have to be honest about the mistakes we made. We don't have legitimacy in the world, Tim, if we go to other countries, in Bosnia or China or anywhere else, and not say, you know, we made some terrible mistakes.

And that lack of a sense of honesty is part of what is driving people's anger towards the United States today. That's why we have the vote in the UN. That's why people--our allies, too, are disturbed by this defense posture.

You can't abrogate the ABM Treaty and move forward on your own to build this defense in a way that threatens the perceptions of security people have. And if you build a defense system, Tim, that can do what they say at the outside, which is change mutual assured destruction, you have invited a potential adversary to build, build, build, to find a way around it.

The lesson of the Cold War is, you do not make this planet safer by moving unilaterally into a place of new weapons. Every single advance in weaponry through the Cold War was matched by one side or the other, and that's why we put the ABM Treaty in place. And that's why we need to proceed very cautiously and very thoughtfully.

RUSSERT: John Kerry, we thank you for your views.

KERRY: Thank you.