Rumsfeld on the impossibility of defending against terrorism (from Plan of Attack - Bob Woodward, page 35)
In an interview four months after 9/11 [Rumsfeld] said, "The key thought about this is that you cannot defend against terrorism." He had learned that when he had spent six months as the Middle East envoy for President Reagan in 1983-84. "You can't defend at every place at every time against every technique. You just can't do it, because they just keep changing techniques, time, and you have to go after them. And you have to take it to them, and that means you have to preempt them."
This was four and one-half months before Bush formally announced his preemption doctrine. Rumsfeld was thinking of a future when the U.S. should be ready to strike first.
Of course, Rumsfeld extrapolated from the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing attacks which killed 241 U.S. service men - the deadliest single attack on Americans overseas since WW II - to Sept 11, 2001. Casualties were growing exponentially.
