A last thought on the anniversary of the cakewalk…from one of the chefs….

Rumsfeld: No. There comes a mike! Just take a second.

Maybe if people who have questions stick their hand up now, someone will get a mike to you and then the mike will be right there with you. There’s one in the back, good.

Go ahead.

Q: Thank you, sir. First, it’s a pleasure to hear you and to be this close to you and see you in person. We’ve seen you on TV a lot, and it’s a neat experience for us.

I’m part of an AEF rotation here, a part of a group that is deployed for AEF 7 and 8, and this is a great place to be deployed, no doubt. But many of us are asking, how long will we be frozen? But my question is, on the behalf of some of our Guard and Reserve men who are here, we know that some units have been mobilized, partially mobilized. Their question is, do you — are we going to go to a full mobilization of Guard and Reserve? And if we are, when will that decision be made?

Rumsfeld: Well — (laughter) — let me say this about that. (Laughter.) It is highly unlikely that we would go to a full mobilization. We — I have been signing a great many deployment orders and mobilization orders and alerting orders. The forces have been flowing now for a good number of weeks, and that has had its intended effect. There is no question but that the world’s focus is on the fact that the Iraqi regime, now for some 12 years, continues to ignore and disagree with the now 17 resolutions of the United Nations. The world understands that; they are looking for cooperation and hoping that the force flow will bring about cooperation, but thus far, it has not.

We don’t talk about deployments in the specific, but we have brought a good many Guard and Reserve on active duty. Fortunately, a great many of them were volunteers. We have been able to have relatively few stop losses. There are some currently, particularly in the Army, but relatively few in the Navy and the Air Force. And it is not knowable if force will be used, but if it is to be used, it is not knowable how long that conflict would last. It could last, you know, six days, six weeks. I doubt six months.

Like…you know…six days…six weeks…you know…  Whatever.  You know.

If you click on the link I’ve provided, to this U.S. Department Of Defense DefenseLink News Transcript, you might notice that it’s a page from the Google cache.  Click on the link at the top of the cache page.  You know.  Where it says, Click here for the current page without highlighting.  Go ahead.  The original page is gone.  We have always been at war with Eastasia…