JIM LEHRER: Let's go through the Taliban now. Is the Taliban still in charge of Afghanistan?

DONALD RUMSFELD: Not really. It never really was a government. It's more of a movement. But given the fact that we are putting so much pressure on them, we're drying up money in bank accounts, we're arresting people around the world for... That are al-Qaida connected. And we are bombing.

Forces on the ground are pressing forward somewhat. And we're creating a situation where life is not easy for the Taliban or for the al-Qaida. That means that they're really not functioning as a government, as such. There's still... They're still a force to be contended with. They've got thousands of troops.

JIM LEHRER: How many thousand?

DONALD RUMSFELD: They have tanks.

JIM LEHRER: How many thousand?

DONALD RUMSFELD: No way to know.

JIM LEHRER: 40, 50 thousand they claim.

DONALD RUMSFELD: Probably in that range.

JIM LEHRER: Armed, trained people?

DONALD RUMSFELD: These are fighters, you bet. Most of the people that are left are fighters. Think of the Soviets pounded that country. These countries... These factions have been fighting against each other for years. It's a situation where the people who don't want to fight have pretty much left.

JIM LEHRER: Now what about tanks and armaments?

DONALD RUMSFELD: They have tanks.

JIM LEHRER: And good ones that work.

DONALD RUMSFELD: You bet. They have tanks that move and shoot; they have armored personnel carriers. They have artillery.

JIM LEHRER: When you started a month ago, you had some information about the Taliban. What have you learned about the Taliban in the course of this month that you did not know going in? What's the most important thing?

DONALD RUMSFELD: I guess one thing, it was unclear to me-and I think to most people -- we knew that the Taliban had invited in the al-Qaida, Osama bin Laden and the foreigners from the Middle East and that they were harboring those terrorists.

We knew that the al-Qaida was giving money to the Taliban, and it was not clear to me the extent to which they were philosophically and ideologically or religiously connected to al-Qaida. It still isn't, but the fact that they're hanging on and linking themselves so directly with al-Qaida, refused every offer to turn them in, every suggestion that they throw them out of their country, suggests that they're pretty well together now. They are one. That's fine. They both have to go.

JIM LEHRER: You thought it might be possible to split them off, right?

DONALD RUMSFELD: Well, we made that proposal as you may recall.

JIM LEHRER: I do.

DONALD RUMSFELD: It was unclear how they would respond because there was pressure in Taliban against Omar to... that argued that we don't want those people that aren't from our country. We don't want those terrorists.

JIM LEHRER: What have you learned about them in terms their tenacity, in terms of their toughness, in terms of their willing to fight to the last man as they claim they're willing to do?

DONALD RUMSFELD: Well, not much. I haven't learned much. These people were that way against the Soviets.

JIM LEHRER: You already knew that.

DONALD RUMSFELD: You bet. They have been fighting each other. Those that are left are fighters. That's what they do. When they get up in the morning.

JIM LEHRER: Do you feel like you're against a smart enemy, a lucky enemy, a fanatic? How do you characterize them?

DONALD RUMSFELD: Well, certainly, a large fraction of the ones that are left have to be of the bin Laden type, attitudinally, philosophically. And if you watch some of the tapes he's made and read some of his comments, it's chilling. I mean this is a man who rules everyone out who doesn't agree with him. And he's willing to kill as many tens of thousands of people as he's able to find.

JIM LEHRER: Have you had an occasion where something happened on the ground as a result of something we did and you said, oh, my goodness, the Taliban did something smart that you hadn't expected them to do that gave you an insight into their ability to function as an enemy?

DONALD RUMSFELD: They've been... We began with the recognition that people that were left in that country were survivors. They are people who live in a rough country, a hostile environment, difficult winters, a lot of mountains up North. And they have fought against the Soviets and threw them out. They fought against each other.

They've been in many cases quite violent to each other in terms of cruelty. And they also know their country well. They've got lots of caves, lots of tunnels. They use horseback and mule and donkeys to move around. They've been able to find ways to resupply themselves. But they're not invincible.

There's a big difference between this situation and the Soviets. The Soviets, they had a... the United States and others against them. There's no one today who is supporting Taliban. I mean the rest of the world is with us and against al-Qaida. JIM LEHRER: What can you tell us about... There have been reports now that the Taliban is putting not only troops but also military equipment in residential areas, in mosques and all of that.

DONALD RUMSFELD: Yes, sir.

JIM LEHRER: Hoping that we will bomb them and there will be widespread civilian casualties. Is that true?

DONALD RUMSFELD: It is true. There's no question but what they are doing is they're taking their tanks and their artillery and their various command-and-control centers, they're using mosques, they're using hospitals, schools and residential areas.

And it's having several effects. One is they have... It's a win- win for them. Either we don't bomb them because they're in a mosque -

JIM LEHRER: Sure.

DONALD RUMSFELD: -- in which case they're safe. Or if we do bomb them, they bring the press in there with a bus and their cameras and take pictures and say what terrible people the westerners are who are doing this. The third effect, however, is interesting. There's no question but that there are Afghan people who don't like it.

They don't like the fact that they're being put at risk, their hospitals, their schools, their mosques, their residential areas by people who don't care if they're killed. At some point they're going to... The Taliban and the al-Qaida are going to be functioning in a more hostile environment. And the people of Afghanistan, I think, must know that we're not against them, that it's not against a race or a religion or a people. It's against terrorists.

JIM LEHRER: Am I wrong, isn't that -- what they're doing against international law to put military... any kind of military asset in a civilian environment?

DONALD RUMSFELD: Oh, these people couldn't care less about international law. I mean, they killed 5,000 people in the United States without batting an eye. If they had had weapons of mass destruction, they would have killed hundreds of thousands of people.

JIM LEHRER: No question in your mind?

DONALD RUMSFELD: No, not a bit.

JIM LEHRER: How is this affecting our strategy? In other words, are we still bombing these sites even though we know there may be civilians in there? How is it affecting our decision-making?

DONALD RUMSFELD: Well, what we're doing is we're trying to put pressure on them everywhere, and we have a variety of weapons and weapon platforms, and munitions, some of which are very, very precise.

Bombs tend not to be. You can have an errant bomb. For example, our precision- guided weapons might be 85, 90 percent accurate. We can tell where they're going to go within... except for the last 10 percent.

And then you might have an errant weapon that goes to the wrong place. We have, however, some platforms where they're 100 percent accurate for all practical purposes and very powerful. So, we're trying to find ways to use more of that for the areas where we have to be quite precise.

JIM LEHRER: Because they have them in these civilian areas, right?

DONALD RUMSFELD: Exactly.

JIM LEHRER: How many... What is the total US casualty figure now?

DONALD RUMSFELD: There has been no one killed by the al-Qaida or the Taliban. We've had one helicopter that was in Pakistan standing by to go in and perform a rescue mission, were it to have been necessary, which it was not. And they landed in an area where the dust storm was so severe that the helicopter tipped over and two were killed.

And, as I recall, two were injured out of that helicopter crew. We've had several... When you use the word casualty I assume you mean not just dead but also wounded.

JIM LEHRER: Yes.

DONALD RUMSFELD: If you go down to Fort Bragg where they have parachute drops in a perfectly controlled situation, when it's over, if you drop 100 people, you're going to have X number of broken ankles, X number of scratches from landings. So when we've parachuted people in, we've had roughly that number.

We had a couple of... two people who broke bones in their feet. One broke a finger. On one special op, they used some explosives to break in to a building in the southern portion of Afghanistan, and some of the fragmentation from materials that the building was made out of, I don't know if it was wood or plaster or mud, came and hit some people and very minor, minor scratches and wounds.

We received light fire on that mission. So the casualties have been quite minimal. But these people are at risk. And there are going to be people killed. Let there be no doubt about it.

JIM LEHRER: How many Taliban have died so far?

DONALD RUMSFELD: Oh, my goodness. I don't have a number. There's no way I could prove it so I suppose I shouldn't give it. I see these reports come across my desk every day, twice a day. And the numbers are, you know, 20 here, 40 there, 12 here, 6 here. It just keeps adding up day after day after day.

JIM LEHRER: Isn't it important to know how you're doing in terms of killing the enemy? No?

DONALD RUMSFELD: I think there's other ways you can measure than body count. You need to know what you're starting with. And that's very difficult in Afghanistan. It's very difficult to know the precise number of MiG aircraft, the precise number of helicopters, the precise number of tanks.

These things are hidden, they're buried, they're in tunnels, they're all over the place. So it's nothing wrong with counting-- and we do; we've got things that we track every day-- but, no, I don't think that's what's determinative.

I think what we need to do is put pressure on their bank accounts. We need to arrest them all across the world. We are. We're up in the hundreds now of people who have been arrested and interrogated. The intelligence we get out of that is terribly important.

JIM LEHRER: But are we into the thousands in terms of dead Taliban fighters?

DONALD RUMSFELD: Oh, I would doubt it. I don't know that. I couldn't say it.

JIM LEHRER: What about civilian casualties on the ground?

DONALD RUMSFELD: Modest. Very, very few.

JIM LEHRER: What does that mean?

DONALD RUMSFELD: You always feel terrible when it happens. We know of one instance where there were three or four who were killed and several wounded. The Taliban, of course, are not telling the truth. They lie. And they've got a report this morning that was amusing.

They said so far they had killed 95 Americans since this started. They haven't killed any. What they do is there will be an attack in an area outside of town or on the periphery of the village. They'll go in and bring stretchers from a clinic, plant people there, bring in the press, have pictures taken and contend that we had done it.

If you think about it, there's ordinance coming from four locations. It's coming from the air where we drop it. It's coming from the ground up where they shoot back. Of course all that... all of that ordinance ends up some place, and it kills people and it hurts things. And then there's people on the ground, the opposition forces, shooting at the Taliban and the Taliban shooting back.

So you've got four different sources of ordinance flying around. Of course, the contention always is that it is us. I don't believe there's ever in history been an effort that has been this precise.

JIM LEHRER: Why are you being so careful?

DONALD RUMSFELD: Well, for several reasons. We have nothing against the Afghan people. They have been just treated terribly by the Taliban. There are millions of them starving. As winter comes you just have to... your heart has to go out to them.

The second reason is because we don't want to kill civilians. We just don't, so we make an effort not to.

Third, if you kill a lot of civilians, the people inside Afghanistan will believe you're not discriminating and that you are against the people of Afghanistan and instead of defecting and leaving Taliban and leaving al-Qaida, they're going to be more supportive and they're going to be against the United States and the coalition forces. And we don't want that.

And, fourth, there are a lot of Muslims in the world. To the extent you behave in a way that suggests that you don't really care about whether or not you're killing soldiers and people that are terrorists or civilians, you just don't care, they then take that aboard and it makes life difficult for countries that are supporting us that have large Muslim populations.

Now it's not true. The United States supported Kuwait. We supported Bosnia. We fought in Kosovo, we've been -- humanitarian assistance in Somalia -- 170 million, the biggest food donor out of any country in the world for Afghanistan before September 11th.

We are not against the Muslim people. We're not against Islam. This has nothing to do with that. It has to do with terrorists who are butchering people around the world. Mass murderers.

JIM LEHRER: Osama bin Laden, is he still alive?

DONALD RUMSFELD: I would think so.

JIM LEHRER: In Afghanistan?

DONALD RUMSFELD: I think so.

JIM LEHRER: You think so?

DONALD RUMSFELD: Um-hum. He does not carry a locator around to assist us.

JIM LEHRER: As a practical matter, can this war on terrorism, no matter how long it lasts, if that man is still alive when it's over, can it....

DONALD RUMSFELD: We'll find him.

JIM LEHRER: You'll find him?

DONALD RUMSFELD: (Nodding).

JIM LEHRER: It is on the list of important things.

DONALD RUMSFELD: Sure. On the other hand, he could show up today dead and I'd be delighted but al-Qaida would still exist. He has a large organization. It's well financed. He's got a lot of key lieutenants. And it would not end things, nor would Omar end things, the head of the Taliban.

JIM LEHRER: Is Osama bin Laden still running al-Qaida?

DONALD RUMSFELD: Oh, sure.

JIM LEHRER: And in a very effective way?

DONALD RUMSFELD: You really never know until sometime later. Of course effectiveness....

JIM LEHRER: What does that mean?

DONALD RUMSFELD: What's it mean? How many people you're killing? How many people have you killed today? Is that the report card for al-Qaida? I suppose it is.

JIM LEHRER: What have you done to al-Qaida, what has the bombing done to al-Qaida's ability to function in Afghanistan?

DONALD RUMSFELD: It's hurt it.

JIM LEHRER: It's hurt it -- in what way?

DONALD RUMSFELD: And around the world. The President's program being so broadly based and being financial and economic and law enforcement as well as military overt and military covert, the pressure that's been put on that network around the world is substantial.

We have enough information to know that all the arrests that have been made have disrupted terrorist attempts. We know that the intelligence we're getting from countries all across the globe is helping us run down people who we then arrest and interrogate. We're drying up bank accounts as you reported earlier today.

JIM LEHRER: But we also just reported Tom Ridge saying there's always... there's still an imminent possibility of another terrorist attack by these people. So something... I mean they're still functioning, are they not?

DONALD RUMSFELD: Of course. Are they functioning as efficiently as they had been previously? No. Are they still there across the globe? You bet. They're in 40, 50, 60 countries, just al-Qaida alone, that one network is out there. And there are countries that harbor and foster and facilitate or at least tolerate that kind of behavior.

JIM LEHRER: There have been a lot of reports that while, yes, the bombing has destroyed a lot of these terrorist camps, these training camps in Afghanistan, there weren't any people in them. In other words the terrorists had all gone by the time we got around to bombing them. Is that correct?

DONALD RUMSFELD: Not quite. But there's no question but that by the first bomb went down, people left targets that were likely targets. You know, they're survivors. On the other hand, we've been rooting them out and finding them and killing them.

JIM LEHRER: And? I mean killing them and, you know, just by - you mean by bombing.

DONALD RUMSFELD: By bombing and shooting.

JIM LEHRER: Bombing and shooting.

DONALD RUMSFELD: You bet.

JIM LEHRER: The Northern Alliance -- are they ready for a major offensive against the Taliban?

DONALD RUMSFELD: I guess we really won't know until they move. But they have capabilities. We've been providing some assistance. We've got Special Forces on the ground with them that have been assisting them with resupplies, of winter gear and food and ammunition -- targeting, most importantly, so that we can pinpoint where their opposition is.

And it has significantly improved their capability. At what point they'll decide that their capability, relative to the opposition, is such that they're willing to move, as they now are near Mazar-e Sharif today and yesterday, when they're going to go against Tahlequah, when they're going to go against Kabul, we'll just have to see.

But I think that - I think that their circumstance has been notably strengthened.

JIM LEHRER: You said we'll have to see. We're not involved in making those decisions with them?

DONALD RUMSFELD: Well, we've got handfuls of people on the ground and they've got thousands. They live there. These are people who have survived. These are people who have fought each other. These are people who have been on both sides from time to time.

This isn't the civil war where there's a line and people are like this. This is a way of life for these people. Sure, we're involved. Sure, we give them advice. The judgment as to when a field commander for the Northern Alliance says, "okay, today is the day, we're moving," that's that person's decision. Now, we can....

JIM LEHRER: He's going to tell you though, right?

DONALD RUMSFELD: Oh, you bet and he's going to coordinate with the other units, we hope, and that's the way the world works. On the other hand, if we're supplying ammunition and we're supplying supplies and we're supplying food and we're supplying air cover and air support, we have the ability to provide it or withhold it.

JIM LEHRER: Have you had assurances, has the United States gotten assurances from the Northern Alliance that if there is victory, whether it's in this city or in that city or whatever, that they will not commit massacres? As you know, the history here is checkered. One side wins and they massacre the other side and the other side does the same. What kind of assurances do we have?

DONALD RUMSFELD: Well, first we should discuss briefly about the Northern Alliance. It is not an entity. It is a group of factions or elements, forces, with commanders that are affiliated in it one way or another but it's not as though it's the US Army with different divisions.

Second, the commanders compete among themselves to a certain extent from time to time.

And the short answer is that we will certainly be attentive to that. There's no question but that there has been a great deal of brutality in that country. It would be most unfortunate if we provided assistance, they moved forward, defeated the Taliban and then behaved like the Taliban.

JIM LEHRER: You told them that? Has the United States told them that?

DONALD RUMSFELD: Oh, you bet. You bet.

JIM LEHRER: If we're going to supply you, we're going to help you, you have to act in a civilized manner in case of victory?

DONALD RUMSFELD: That that -- that is our strong recommendation and that certainly it will have an effect on our relationship with you. I think they... They all want to play a part when this is over. And I think their behavior will affect the part they play.

JIM LEHRER: Is it still part of your strategy that if there is major ground troop combat in Afghanistan between the Taliban and the good guys that those good guys, for the most part on the ground, are not going to be our people or coalition people, they're going to be Northern Alliance and other Afghans who are already there?

DONALD RUMSFELD: Certainly, the hope is that first of all, we've not ruled out anything. We have determined... We are determined to get al-Qaida and the Taliban out of there and to either... Any way we can.

How that happens remains to be seen. Our first choice, obviously, is to... Is to assist the people who have a stake in that country and encourage them and provide the kinds of assistance so they will be emboldened to go ahead and seize back their country from the people who have taken it over and invited in these foreigners, the al-Qaida, to be there to commit terrorist acts around the globe. That is our first choice.

JIM LEHRER: Are you getting the find of... Kind of military help you need from our coalition partners?

DONALD RUMSFELD: You bet. It's been wonderful. The offers of assistance have been terrific. We've got enormous number of countries that have liaison offices in Tampa with Tommy Franks, the combatant commander for this activity in that part of the world. He has been working with people, not just NATO countries but Muslim countries, with Turkey and with Jordan and all kinds of countries. It's just been terrific.

JIM LEHRER: There have been suggestions that you have, you, Donald Rumsfeld, have been reluctant to involve a lot of these coalition military forces in this... Up to this point because you didn't want to affect the decision-making, you didn't want to have a big meeting every time you chose another group of targets or whatever and that the Germans wanted to come in, the French wanted to come in, the Brits wanted to come in and you've been reluctant to come in. Is that true?

DONALD RUMSFELD: No, it's not true. The combatant commander, Tommy Franks, General Franks, has that issue before him. And what he has done is he has brought all these people who have offered to participate in. They're there in Tampa, they're coordinated.

The Brits have already been involved in a variety of different ways. There are a number of countries that have ships involved with us. There are people supplying all kinds of assistance, and intelligence sharing, base over flight, basing rights; and we have not used very many US forces on the ground as yet.

So if you have a major ground activity you will see a great many countries involved. The countries... any country that wants to can participate today by air. The problem is that the... it requires basing rights on the periphery of the area, unless you have aircraft carriers, which most countries don't.

So getting at that target is very difficult. It is... We don't have big ports and we don't have big air bases sitting nearby that we can use. So, finding the right way to use coalition forces is... One thing that we have... People have offered to replace us elsewhere, for example, to backfill us in, for example, Bosnia or Kosovo.

JIM LEHRER: Tom Friedman, a columnist for the New York Times, raised some feathers a couple of weeks ago when he wrote a column with a headline on it that said, "We Are Alone." He went through and said, Mr. and Mrs. America, face it. The people who really care the most about... Really care at all about the fact of those 5,000 Americans who died on September 11th are Americans. He went through this list of these Pakistan doing this on this day and all this sort of thing. Is he right about that?

DONALD RUMSFELD: He's not wrong in the sense that each country in the world has to make up its own mind as to how concerned it is about this problem first and given the fact that weapons of mass destruction are increasingly available in the world, most countries understand that the danger's big, it's serious, it's real. And it's urgent for us to address this.

Then they have to look at their own circumstance in their neighborhood and make a judgment. If we do this, what's the effect of it? Then they have to look at their capabilities. What can we really do to help? Now, most of them can help by providing intelligence because they have law enforcement capabilities. And this problem is across the globe. Some can help with weapons.

Some have weapons that are usable in this kind of a situation. There are a number of countries that have very fine trained special forces. There are a number of countries that have ships. And the support, oral... vocal support is also important. I mean, what the president of Pakistan has done is critically important.

Here's a neighboring country that had relations with Taliban that has threats of terrorist acts against it and yet he made a decision to support the United States and has allowed us to participate and to be involved in his country in certain discreet ways which we are doing.

JIM LEHRER: What do you think of the conventional wisdom that's been in the... Some of the writing in the last few days, the last several days, that the support for our military action-- not sympathy for what happened on September 11th but support for our military action-- is beginning to wane because we have not involved more people in what we've been doing?

DONALD RUMSFELD: Well, I personally think that Secretary Powell and the President have done a terrific job in forming a set of coalitions, that is to say, countries that will help a whole group on intelligence, a whole group on law enforcement, a whole group on freezing bank accounts, a whole group on providing naval capabilities or over flight capabilities, the first time in history that NATO has stepped up and invoked the attack against one as an attack against all. I think it's been wonderful support that we've received.

And I think that... I think the impatience you're characterizing is more with the press than it is with the American people. I think the American people understand the truth that the President has said, that this is not going to be fast. It's going to be... take some time. It is a totally different kind of a conflict. There's no road map for it. There's no silver bullet.

JIM LEHRER: I know you've said this before. E.J. Dion, a writer in the Washington Post said wait a minute, Mr. Secretary, it's the conservative Republican writers, not the press, that has been writing saying you guys have been too timid. You've been too slow, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. You don't agree with that?

DONALD RUMSFELD: There have been a couple of conservative writers....

JIM LEHRER: And military experts, former military people who have said the same thing.

DONALD RUMSFELD: I don't have much after chance to watch television or read papers but most of the military people I've seen on channels have been very supportive and complimentary about the way it's been... I mean, it's been a month.

JIM LEHRER: Yeah.

DONALD RUMSFELD: Think of that. I mean, that's amazing -- to have moved that many people, to fashion that many countries' involvement, to have -- what -- of some 2,000 sorties have been flown over that country, 300 hours of radio programming, leaflets have been put over a million meals of food have been put down by the United States' military.

It is a lot that has been done, and a lot of Taliban people have been killed and a lot of al-Qaida people have been killed and a lot of tanks have been taken out. If there were navies we could sink, we would sink them. If there were armies we could take on head on, we would. If there were air forces we could shoot down, we would. They aren't there.

JIM LEHRER: Personally, when you took this job, when President Bush asked you to be his secretary of defense, did you ever think that you would be running a war like this?

DONALD RUMSFELD: No one in the world thought we'd be running a war like this. Imagine, you're sitting in the Pentagon and a plane... One of our planes is used as a missile to fly into our building and into the World Trade Center. It was beyond one's imagination. That plastic knives and our own commercial aircraft filled with our own people would be used as the implement of war.

JIM LEHRER: How are you doing, 60 days later?

DONALD RUMSFELD: Good.

JIM LEHRER: Personally?

DONALD RUMSFELD: Well, I just returned from five or six countries in three days. So, I could use a little sleep. But I am really impressed with the way that men and women in the armed forces, the uniformed people and the civilian people in the Department of Defense have responded to this.

I'm very pleased with the way other countries have responded. I think that we've got a good strategy. I think that the President has shown just enormous good judgment and instinct and decision-making on this. And will. And that's what it takes. I mean in the last analysis, it takes determination and steadiness of purpose and will. That's what he has shown this country and the world.

JIM LEHRER: Mr. Secretary, thank you very much.

DONALD RUMSFELD: Thank you.