Vowing to go on the offensive against terrorist, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the United States had "no choice" but to strike targets in countries that harbor terrorists.
"The reality is that the best defense against terrorism is an offense, that is to say taking the battle to the terrorists and particularly to the countries across this globe that have been tolerating, facilitating, financing and making possible the activities of those terrorists."
Asked whether that meant striking targets in countries that harbor terrorists, he said, "We have no choice."
"Either the United States acquiesces to terrorists, becomes isolationists and turns inwards, gives up our freedom," or it strikes back, he said in an interview with Fox television.
Rumsfeld said the United States would wage a broad and unconventional campaign, combining military, diplomatic, economic pressure against a terrorist network that he said operates in 60 countries, extending far beyond Osama bin Laden, the prime suspect in Tuesday's terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.
He said US forces were at high readiness, DefCon Four.
"This isn't going to be a few cruise missiles flying around on television for the world to see that something blew up," he said.
He said the terrorist networks "don't have things to blow up."
"They are in apartments, they are using laptops, and they are using cell phones and they are functioning in the shadows, not out in front," he said.
"Now, that countries that are harboring them do, so I'm not suggesting that there will not be military action. There very likely will be," he said.
"But it will have to be a broad effort over a long period of time, going after their finances, cracking them down. A lot of it will be law enforcement, a lot of it will be special operations," he said.
Asked whether the ban on assassinations was a bad idea, Rumsfeld demurred, but said "the United States needs to deal with the network and the network involves people."
The anti-terror campaign would last years and that Americans should be prepared for terrorist attacks "at any time and any place, using any technique."
"It is not physically possible to defend in every place, at every time against every conceivable method. We just saw the use of aircraft. It could be ships, it could be subways, it could be any number of things."
He raised the prospect of terror attacks with chemical and biological weapons, saying that a number of the countries that are harboring terrorist organizations have such weapons -- WASHINGTON (AFP)
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