U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld gave a poor grading to the administration's war against extremist ideology on Monday, saying that he was not going to suggest "that it's easy."

"I would -- if I were grading, I would say we probably deserve a D or a D-plus as a country as to how well we're doing in the battle of ideas that's taking place in the world today," Rumsfeld said after a speech on the anti-terrorism war at the Army War College, in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

The secretary was responding to a question from the audience on "the war of ideology."

He said the war was "basically a struggle not between the West and Muslims, it's a struggle within the Muslim faith."

To better fight the war of ideology, he said, the United States would have to find ways to encourage and support moderates who did not believe in violent extremism, "because they're the ones who are in the struggle."

In his prepared speech, Bush said the al-Qaida terrorist group and extremists were the "most brutal in our history."

"They currently lack only the means, not the desire, to kill, murder millions of innocent people with weapons vastly more powerful than boarding passes and box cutters," he said.

Earlier in the day, Rumsfeld visited Shanksville, Pennsylvania, to see the site where hijacked United Airlines Flight 93 crashed on Sept. 11, 2001, killing all 40 people aboard.

Source: Xinhua