that time frame. i think it s a huge error for adviser. i worked with him in the 80s on the strategy to defeat the soviet empire. if you re worried about the iranians in iraq, develop a strategy to replace the iranians dictatorship and iraq will be fine. if you want to stop wahhabiism, get an american energy policy so no american president ever bows to a saudi king. then you can put pressure on the saudis because you have enough american energy to stop this. governor romney, let s you have said that you would not send troops in right now. but give us a sense of the trigger, what would it take for you to send troops back in? it s a very high hurdle. the decision to send our men and women into harm s way is one which will be made with great seriousness and sobriety what kind of things? you can t begin to say, but it would have to require significant, dramatic american interests. you have to have a president explain the interests and indicated how we d go in. we d g
them. so they re working out of their pride and what they do, their loyalty to america and their jobs, and we can t even pay their credit card bills. when they travel, they incur hotel expenses, airline tickets and those. they re doing their work but they re doing it because they re proud employees and they believe in what they do. but this just isn t right. this isn t right to ask people to do this, not when congress could come back in. the president has appealed to them, the secretary, i m appealing to them. congress, come back, pass a bill and let us put these people back to work and put literally tens of thousands of construction workers back on the job. it s just so ironic, such a juxtaposition foyou to say because of their professionalism, because of their dedication to america, that the safety inspectors are coming back to work every day and not getting paid, and congress is on vacation and so far, no concrete plans to come back to work. unbelievable. it s no way to run. we
jeanne, explain what happened? well, you know, the passengers were trapped for hours on planes on the or the mack, and thousands of people were unable to get to the destinations for day, and a lot of people are asking is this the way that the air transportation system is supposed to work? reporter: the snowstorm is over, but the firestorm continues over flights marooned on the tarmac, and delayed and canceled. that will be about two hours from now is that accurate? five fricking planes today! caller: as . reporter: as incredible as it seems for the passengers stranded, the industry says this is not a malfunction, but this is winter weather, and the system did not fail. some aviation experts agree pointing out that dozens of airports up and down the east coast were swamped with snow. if we had better air traffic control or better management of some airports on the ground,
and sir, what is the airport s responsibility in all of this? should they have had a gate, should they have had some emergency go team to bring a ladder there, should they have made arrangements through customs to get them through? what is the airport s responsibility, in your opinion? well, i think all of us are partners in the air transportation system, so after we have a few moments to get the system back up and running operationally, i think we ll all have a chance to sit down and think about how we could have done this better. but finger pointing really doesn t do anything at this point. the real issue is to try and make sure we get the passengers on their way. that was the goal from everybody in the beginning and hopefully we can get that accomplished now. if i were you, i would be pointing the finger at the snow. but i m just kidding. trying to add levity to a frustrating situation for so many people. gus whitkam, we really do appreciate your joining us. one quick question
exercise like this, is there any danger that we re alerting our enemies to how the government might respond? well, savannah, i can reassure you we re not going to be doing in this exercise in public that s going to reveal national secrets or so we re not concerned about tipping off our enemies. the real nightmare i think falls into two categories. one a massive denial of service attack, an attack that would paralyze, for example, our air transportation system or our power system. something on which we come to rely whether it be a huge impact on millions of people. the second big concern is the possibility of what i call a corruption of service attack, an attack that doesn t stop the service, but corrupts the information. in a way that causes a lot of financial damage. for example, imagine if you had a major bank that was infiltrated by cybercrooks who began to system kalli alter the financial information in everybody s bank accounts. that would not only create a