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CNN Live Today

Bush Meets With Top Brass to Discuss Military Spending

Aired August 21, 2002 - 12:19   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: Prairie Chapel Ranch, it is a long way from the Pentagon, but that dusty piece of central Texas is the meeting place today for the cream of America's defense and national security establishment.
CNN's John King tells us what they are up to -- John.

JOHN KING, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Hello to you, Carol.

That meeting underway at the president's ranch nearby. What they are up to, we should start with the headline, is not Iraq, according to senior administration officials. Despite all the public debate, the public criticism and skepticism about the president's stated policy of removing Saddam Hussein from power, this meeting at the Bush ranch, we are told, is not about Iraq. Perhaps it will come up in passing, we are told, but the focus is just how the Pentagon budget should be spent in the coming months and, more importantly, in the coming years.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, White House Chief of Staff Andy Card among those who arrived at the president's ranch by helicopter this morning.

On the table, Mr. Rumsfeld, we are told, will press the president to move aggressively ahead with missile defense. The president also faces some tough choices. He will spend about $380 billion for the Pentagon budget. He still has to make some tough choices between and among weapons programs. Some Secretary Rumsfeld wants to cancel, others he wants to cut back. That always causes a fight with Congress. The president has to make the final decisions.

Before he came here, Secretary Rumsfeld politely criticizing the news media. He says at the moment, the news media obsessed with Iraq and the military planning for that fight. Secretary Rumsfeld said much more attention should be paid, say, to the ongoing campaign in Afghanistan and other challenges.

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I really do think that it is a mistake for the press and the media to focus excessively on this one subject and particularize everything to it. I find that the debate and the discussion of the national dialogue, the international dialogue, is a little bit out of balance.

(END VIDEO CLIP) KING: One general who will not be at the table this morning is Tommy Franks. He runs the Central Command and would be the commander in chief on the ground of any military campaign against Saddam Hussein. Not here on the Bush ranch today. He was in Kazakhstan earlier today on a diplomatic mission, and he told reporters there he stays out of all the diplomacy and all the politics. He has been told by the president to draw up credible plans for dealing with Saddam Hussein. General Franks says he is doing that.

Of course, the White House again insisting, though that will not be the subject of the meeting now underway at the ranch -- Carol.

LIN: Thank you very much, senior White House correspondent John King, in Crawford, Texas.

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