Rumsfeld Rips U.N. Over Gitmo

Defense Secretary: Kofi Annan 'Flat Wrong' To Want Prison Shut Down

(CBS/AP) 
"And we're going to have to step in, go back in and fix it and then turn it back over again, and it's going to be three steps forward and one step back. It isn't going to be perfect, it isn't going to be pretty," he said.

Rumsfeld said U.S. forces already have closed or turned over to the Iraqis 30 military bases. He offered no projections of future U.S. troop withdrawals. Last December the Pentagon said the number of U.S. troops in Iraq would drop from about 138,000 to about 130,000 by March.

Rumsfeld also said al Qaeda and other Islamic extremist groups have poisoned the Muslim public's view of the United States through deft use of the Internet and other modern communications methods that the American government has failed to master.

"Our enemies have skillfully adapted to fighting wars in today's media age, but for the most part we, our country, our government, has not adapted," he said.

He quoted Ayman al-Zawahri, the chief lieutenant of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, as saying that their terrorist network is in a media battle for the hearts and minds of Muslims. Rumsfeld agreed, saying that the battle for public opinion is at least as important as the battles on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The extremist groups are able to act quickly on the information front, with relatively few people, while the U.S. government bureaucracy has yet to keep up in an age of e-mail, blogs and instant messaging, he said.

"We in the government have barely even begun to compete in reaching their audiences," Rumsfeld said.

Rumsfeld wants the military to get better at putting out propaganda, which he admits is a touchy subject since it sometimes involves secretly planting good-news story overseas. As a model for future operations, Rumsfeld cited receipt military aid to the victims of the Pakistani earthquake, Martin reports.

"In some cases, military public affairs officials have had little communications training and little, if any, grounding in the importance of timing and rapid response, and the realities of digital and broadcast media," Rumsfeld said.