Iraq war makes US safer: US Defense Secretary Rumsfeld

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said the US-led war in Iraq has made the United States more secure.

"We're safer in the sense the violent extremists have said what they intend to do, and they intend to bring down the moderate Muslim regime in that region," he told Fox news.

"So victory is, in a real sense, maintaining our way of life. And Iraq is a country with oil, with water, with intelligent people, with history and if that were to be turned into a haven for terrorists, the world would be a different world.

"The region would be a different region, and the vulnerability of the American people there, in other parts of the world, and in the United States would be greater by terrorists. There's no doubt in my mind," he said.

Pressed again as to how the war makes the United States safer, Rumsfeld told Fox, "Because we want to fight the terrorists not in the United States, but outside of the United States."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20051216/pl_afp/usattacksiraqrumsfeld