From yesterday's news conference.
Q: Mr. Secretary, according to Ahmed Chalabi, he warned the U.S. troops about the possibility of this attack against the U.N. Do you have any reports about it?
Rumsfeld: I do. It's not true. And I was handed, when I came down here, a statement by the Iraqi National Congress that apparently they have issued today, pointing out that that did not happen. And if somebody wants it, it's here.
Meanwhile, GEN Abizaid paints a bigger picture of the Iraqis who are helping to secure themselves.
Q: U.S. troops, right. And you said that it's up to the Iraqis to eventually provide their own security. However, apparently they can't do that now. What are you doing in the short term, short of adding more troops, to provide some security? Are you bringing in some policemen quickly or -- what are you doing in the short term to try to provide more security?
Abizaid: Well, thanks for that question. I think it's clear that we've got to do a lot more to bring an Iraqi face to the security establishments throughout Iraq very quickly.
Having said that, I think it's also important for people to know that there's more than 50,000 Iraqis already under arms that are working in coordination with the coalition. We've got 35,000 people, for example, in the police forces. We've got a border force that's forming. We've got Iraqi Civil Defense Corps volunteers -- over 2,300 of them -- that have come forward to form battalions to work with our divisions. We've got an awful lot of people that we've hired to defend infrastructure, somewhere close to 17,000. So --
Rumsfeld: This is in 3-1/2 months.
Abizaid: Yes, sir. Yeah.
Rumsfeld: This is the 50,000 or 60,000 Iraqis have been pulled together.
Abizaid: So it's not the lone American rifleman out there defending Iraq. We're working in conjunction with Iraqis to make the place a better place to live. That having been said, there's a hell of a lot more work that has to be done to secure Iraq in terms of building their capacity.
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