Yesterday, along with four other journalists, I lunched with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Gen. Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. We had a wide-ranging discussion on North Korea, Iraq, and the reports that there was a coming change in administration policy toward Iraq. Mr. Rumsfeld said that the President had asked him to stay out of politics in this election, and he was determined to do just that. Several of us tried to nudge or kid him into it, and the most we could get was a "nice try" or two.

Rumsfeld explained that the conference the president held last weekend with him and our top generals didn't signal a major shift on Iraq. This conference wasn't something out of the ordinary and in the two or three others held before the president had used this session to talk through ideas with his top advisors. As to the idea that the Congressionally-created Baker-Hamilton "Iraq Study Group" might recommend major policy shifts, Rumsfeld demurred. He said that outside groups such as that one can often be helpful by bringing new viewpoints to the analysis. The Baker group - which interfaces mostly with National Security Advisor Steven Hadley -- has met with Rumsfeld at the White House and will be coming to the Pentagon for more discussions in mid-November.

I asked if the Baker group was trying to answer the right questions. Are we talking about Iraq without talking about a regional solution? Rumsfeld said he wasn't familiar with the mandate Congress had given the Baker group. When I pressed him that too many people want to talk about Iraq without placing it in context he said, "I think it's awfully hard - I know some people would like to do it - but it's awfully hard to look at Iraq and not look at it in the context of the world we live in, and the area that it is in, and the activities of Iran and Syria and the broader question of the Shia-Sunni interaction that's taking place." The problems of the Middle East are, inferentially, regional and cannot be solved within the borders of any single nation.

Asked if he was planning to resign after the elections, Rumsfeld said that if he were, he'd have spoken to the president about it and that no such discussion had taken place.

We talked about North Korea and the ability of the world to achieve its nuclear disarmament. Mr. Rumsfeld said that the problem had been the lack of cohesion among the international community and that the president's approach intended to create that cohesion and thus the leverage to accomplish the necessary solution. Rumsfeld was quick to explain that the problem of nuclear North Korea was much different than the problem posed by Iran. He gave us copies of what is now his favorite picture. It's a night time satellite photo of the Korean peninsula taken (apparently repeatedly or in some time-lapse format) from February 1 - March 31, 2006. It shows nearly half of South Korea bathed in artificial light, and all of North Korea - except the capital, Pyongyang - utterly dark. "If you think of North Korea, it is very different from Iran. There's people who are starving. They have people who are going in the military who are under five feet and less than one hundred pounds. There's a lack of nutrition in the country." The sort of deterrence that worked before may work against North Korea, though Rumsfeld said the principal danger from North Korea is proliferation: "He'll sell anything."

Much of the discussion centered around the ability of America to fight a long war. Both Rumsfeld and Pace used the example of the Cold War to illustrate their conviction that America does and will continue to have the ability to stay in the war against terrorists until it's done. Rumsfeld elaborated.

He said that Americans were raised - "socialized" was the word he used - to believe that our military can win any war by going out and defeating a nation or an army. But times have changed. He said of Iraq, "There's no way the military can lose. There's also no way the military can win all alone. That isn't the nature of it...There's no major army, navy, air force to go and attack and destroy." In wars like this, there will be no "clean wins."

How long will it take? How will the American people support a war such as this? Rumsfeld said, "We have to be smart enough and wise enough as we were in the Cold War to recognize the danger, and to recognize that it takes perseverance."

Gen. Pace added, "We're back to the common understanding of the threat. The American people are willing to withstand a long-term challenge as exemplified by the Cold War and the Soviet Union...The good news is that since 9-11 we haven't been attacked here at home. What that means is that some Americans don't yet grasp fully the very real nature of this threat to the survival of the nation."