Q: A question on Afghanistan. The commanders there recently are expressing a lot of optimism on finding bin Laden. One even says he's (Inaudible.). Is there any basis for an increased optimism in that?
Rumsfeld: How does one answer that? We've got a terrific team out there in General Lawson and General Barneau and the Ambassador (Inaudible.). They're all working hard. I suppose what that may be a reflection of is their enthusiasm, the fact that they feel they're well organized and they're disciplined and they're working the problem, and they're hopeful. But I think neither one of them, or whoever said it, I don't know, but I doubt that either one of them if they had reasonably good intelligence would be making a statement like that and tipping off UBL that they were close on his heels.
So I think what you probably heard was a feeling of confidence in the people they've got working the problem and the enthusiasm they have and the contention they have that ultimately they'll find him. I've always believed ultimately they'll find him.
Saudi man may have mad cow disease
By RAWYA RAGEH
The Associated Press
2/6/2004, 12:00 p.m. ET
JIDDAH, Saudi Arabia (AP) — Saudi medical authorities believe a man hospitalized last month and now in a coma is suffering from the kingdom's first case of the human form of mad cow disease.
Official medical records shown to The Associated Press on Friday by the patient's family said test findings a day after Abdul Karim Eskandar was admitted to the hospital "were suggestive of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease."
Abdul Karim Eskandar, 64, was admitted to Jiddah's King Faisal Specialist Hospital Jan. 20, and lost his memory, eyesight and speech before falling into a coma.
It was not clear how the Quran teacher had contracted the disease, since he had never eaten beef, according to his son, Abdul Moneim Abdul Karim.
Abdul Karim said doctors told him a handful of other patients had also been diagnosed with the disease.
AP was not immediately able to contact any of the other patients or their families.
Abdul Karim said Eskandar started complaining of feebleness and blurred vision in November. Doctors initially suspected that he had suffered a stroke.
After the diagnosis — tests had been sent to Mayo Medical Laboratories in the United States for confirmation — doctors said Eskandar may have unwittingly consumed beef during a trip to England in 1999, at the height of the spread of variant CJD there.
One doctor told Abdul Karim that his father could have contracted the disease without eating contaminated beef, the son said.
Attempts to reach Eskandar's doctor were not successful and it was not immediately possible to reach health officials because of a two-week Muslim holiday.
"We will not give up on him because we are not convinced with the doctors' diagnosis here," Abdul Karim said. The family plans to take Eskandar to the University of Vienna Medical School, which has agreed to carry out further tests.
A letter from a professor of internal medicine at the Austrian school said Eskandar seems to be suffering from a "neurological disorder of unknown origin."
The causes of classic CJD, a fatal human dementia known for 80 years, are unknown. The disease, which is neither bacteria nor fungus, could be inherited, spread through infected surgical equipment, tissue transplants or hormones. Variant CJD is linked to the consumption of tainted beef.