NEWS TRANSCRIPT from the United States Department of Defense
DoD News Briefing
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld
Thursday, December 27, 2001 - 2:00 p.m


We also have a lot of work ahead of us -- in the war on terrorism, to be sure, but also here at home. As we prosecute today's war, we're also working to try to prepare our nation for the next war by transforming the Department of Defense and our armed forces for the 21st century.

We refashioned the missile defense and the U.S. research, development, and testing program from one that had been constrained by the ABM Treaty to one that is broad-based and designed to test the widest range of promising technologies.

We will certainly need sustained investments over a long period of time.

In the wake of September 11th, we've been awakened as a nation to the reality that the world remains a very dangerous place.

To ensure peace and prosperity, we have to have the best trained and the best equipped armed forces on the face of the earth. That is a role that our country has to assume during this period.

We're blessed with extraordinary men and women who risk their lives each day so that each of us can live in peace and freedom. They are clearly doing us proud in Afghanistan today and in many other countries of the world, and we ought not to forget where our forces are spread far and wide across this globe -- in Korea and in Japan and in Bosnia and Kosovo and in the Sinai, just to name a few of the places.