For Immediate Release
Office of the Vice President
October 13, 2004
Vice President and Mrs. Cheney's Remarks and Q&A; at a Town Hall Meeting in Meadville, Pennsylvania
Allegheny College
Meadville, Pennsylvania
11:36 A.M. EDT
MRS. CHENEY: Thank you so much. (Applause.) Please -- thank you
so much. We love being here, and would you all sit down? We would
love it if you would do that.
I just want to introduce Elizabeth and Grace. And Elizabeth is a
first grader, and she really is a good reader. So Mrs. Bush is very
proud of her. And this is Grace. She has on a new pair of shoes that
have made her fall down many times, but they're quite beautiful and
pink. (Applause.) So they're very glad to be here with you.
Now, Elizabeth and Grace, would you go back and see your mom? That
would be really good. Thank you. (Applause.)
Well, it's just a beautiful day to be here at Allegheny College,
and we're so pleased that you would all come out. And the trees could
not be more beautiful. The sky is blue. What a glorious day. And we
have felt so privileged as we've traveled all across this country and
seen the many beautiful places in America -- we've felt so proud to be
Americans, as I know all of you do, too. (Applause.)
When I make a list of all the reasons I am proud to be an American,
I'll tell you right at the top, I put our President, George W. Bush.
(Applause.)
He has done a magnificent job these last four years, and if you'll
permit me to say so, the Vice President is no slouch either.
(Applause.) I get to introduce Dick because I've known him for so
long. (Laughter.) I have known him since he was 14 years old. This
is true. And his job that summer I first knew him was sweeping out the
Ben Franklin store in Casper, Wyoming. (Laughter.) And I've known him
through a number of jobs since. I've known him since he was digging
ditches at the Central Wyoming Fair and Rodeo Grounds, which is just
outside our hometown in Casper. And I've known him since he was
loading bentonite -- hundred-pound sacks of bentonite onto railroad
cars. And I've known him since he was building power line across the
West to help pay for his education. And I like to tell about all those
jobs because I think when you grow up working hard, you learn some
really important lessons. And one of them is that the hard working
people of this country ought to get to keep as much of their paychecks
as possible. (Applause.)
They like that. I like that. Well, thank you so much. I've felt
so privileged these last four years to really have had a front row seat
on history. And I've felt so proud to watch our great nation rise up
after the awful attacks of September 11th, and our great nation rose up
and we comforted those whose lives had been changed forever by that
day. And under the leadership of our President, we went after the
terrorists who had attacked us, and we went after states that sponsored
terror. To keep our country safe, our President has led an effort to
defend us over there, so we don't have to defend ourselves here in the
streets of our own cities. (Applause.)
When I think about this election, I'm sure I'm like you, there are
a lot of issues that are important to me, but there's one that is
really in the forefront of my mind at all times, and that's because I
am a mother, and I'm a grandma. And I think about the safety and
security of my children and grandchildren. And one thing you know we
can count on is that the terrorists are going to try to come after us
again. And when I say to myself, who do I want standing in the door,
it is not John Kerry, and it is not John Edwards. (Applause.)
The people I want in charge of our security and the safety of my
children and grandchildren are George Bush and Dick Cheney.
(Applause.) And so let me introduce to you my husband, Dick Cheney, the
Vice President of the United States. (Applause.)
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Thank you. (Applause.) Thank you.
(Applause.) Thank you all very much. (Applause.) Thank you.
(Applause.)
Well, thank you very much. She wouldn't go out with me until I was
17. (Laughter.) It's a true story. But I tell people often that we
got married because Dwight Eisenhower got elected President of the
United States. In 1952, I was a youngster living in Lincoln, Nebraska
with my folks. Dad worked for the Soil Conservation Service.
Eisenhower got elected. They reorganized the government. Dad got
transferred to Casper, Wyoming, and that's where I met Lynne, and we
grew up together, went to high school together, and recently celebrated
our 40th wedding anniversary. (Applause.) I explained to a group
the other night that if it hadn't been for Eisenhower's great election
victory in 1952, Lynne would have married somebody else. (Laughter.)
And she said, right, and now he'd be Vice President of the United
States. (Laughter and applause.) They always laugh at that, but they
know it's true. (Laughter.) It's true.
We're delighted to be here today in western Pennsylvania. It is a
beautiful part of the country. I've got a few streams in Pennsylvania
I visited on more than one occasion with my fly rod. And it's great
country, and we've got some great friends here. And you've got some
great members of Congress that represent you and serve you so ably in
Washington -- John Peterson, this morning; and Phil English; Rick
Santorum; Arlen Specter. It's a very talented group. (Applause.)
What we ordinarily do with these town hall meetings is it's an
opportunity for me to share some thoughts with you on an important
issue or two, and then we stop and open it up to questions and
comments. And you'll have an opportunity to offer up your thoughts and
ideas, or to pursue other issues. I don't mean to restrict the subject
matter at all this morning, but what I would like to talk about at the
outset is what I think goes to the heart of this election and why it's
so important. Now, there's going to be a debate tonight in Arizona.
The President is ready. He's loaded for bear. I'm sure he'll do a
great job, just like he did last Friday night -- (applause) -- on
domestic issues. But what I wanted to do today was to focus on the
national security question, on the question of how we guarantee the
safety and security of our nation in the years ahead. And I say, I
don't mean to restrict the conversation just to that subject, but I
think it goes to the heart of the decision that we're going to make as
a nation on the 2nd of November. And it's a very, very important piece
of business for us.
The reason I want to talk about is I think you can look back
through American history and find periods when we've come to sort of
watershed events, when we've arrived at a point where we had to
fundamentally change the way we thought about security because we faced
a new threat, because we had to reorganize our military, or take steps
to put in place a set of policies that then were crucial to securing
the country for many years ahead.
I think of the period immediately after World War II as one of
those eras, when we came back after we'd won the war in the Pacific and
in Europe, then all of a sudden, we found ourselves faced with the Cold
War, with the Soviet Union that had developed nuclear weapons, occupied
half of Europe, and was a major threat to the United States. And we
developed the policy of deterrence, a strategy of holding at risk the
Soviet Union so they'd never be tempted to launch against the United
States. We created the Department of Defense in 1947, the Central
Intelligence Agency; created the North Atlantic Treaty Organization --
a series of steps -- got a funny buzz in the sound system -- but took a
series of steps that were essential and that were then supported by
Republican and Democrat administrations alike going forward for the
next 40 years, until we prevailed in the Cold War, and the Soviet Union
imploded, the Berlin Wall came down.
I sense we're at another one of those turning points in our history
that dates specifically to 9/11. And the events of that date when all
of a sudden we were struck by the al Qaeda terrorists in not only New
York and Washington, but of course Shanksville, in Pennsylvania --
where we lost nearly 3,000 people, more people than we lost at Pearl
Harbor. And we also were made aware in relatively short order that
that terrorist network was out there, and that they were doing
everything they could to try to acquire deadlier weapons to use against
us. We know from materials we found in Afghanistan and from
interrogating some of the people we've captured that they would love to
get their hands on a chemical or biological weapon, or even a nuclear
weapon. And the biggest threat we face today as a nation is the
possibility of a group of terrorists in the midst of one of our own
cities with that kind of deadly capability that would put at risk in
relatively short order the lives of hundreds of thousands of
Americans.
And we have to keep that risk and that threat in mind when we think
about what kind of strategy do we want to put in place, and how do we
conduct ourselves in the years ahead to minimize the possibility that
that will ever happen -- what strategy do we need to pursue in the war
on terror. And I think the decision we're going to make on November
2nd goes right smack at that issue, and that there is a fairly clear
choice in terms of the way we will pursue that objective and the way
President Bush will continue to pursue that objective, and I think the
way John Kerry and John Edwards would go about it. And that's what I
want to focus on this morning.
If you think back to what happened on 9/11, we did a number of
things in the immediate aftermath of that -- some of the stuff had been
working before. But we focused especially on strengthening our
defenses here at home. We created the Department of Homeland Security
-- got a great Pennsylvanian in Tom Ridge, used to be the congressman
from here, running it. (Applause.)
It's the most sweeping reorganization of the federal government
since we created the Department of Defense in 1947. We passed the
Patriot Act to give law enforcement the same tools that we use against
drug traffickers and organized crime so that they can use those tools
against terrorist organizations. We recently passed Project BioShield,
which gives the Food and Drug Administration and the National
Institutes of Health money and authority to work to develop
countermeasures against the possible attack with biological weapons --
a series of steps to make our defenses much tougher here at home than
they've ever been before.
But the President also made another crucial decision, and that was
that there's no such thing as a perfect defense. You can get it right
99 percent of the time, and given the nature of the threat, if they get
through one time out of a hundred, or one time out of a thousand, the
consequences are enormous. So the President made the decision that not
only do we have to have a good defense, we also have to go on offense.
And that's absolutely crucial to the strategy. (Applause.)
And that means using our intelligence capabilities, but also our
military force capabilities to aggressively go after the terrorists
wherever we find them, wherever they're organizing and training and
planning to launch attacks against the United States. But we also --
and this is a departure from the past, we also have to go after those
who sponsor terror because there are states out there that have for
years provided sanctuary and safe harbor for terrorists, in some cases
provided funding for them, or provided them with weapons, have
basically been state sponsors of terror. And that decision to go after
the terrorists, as well as those who sponsor terrorists has been vital
in terms of the strategy that we've pursued. And you've seen it, of
course, in Afghanistan where we went in and took down the Taliban. We
closed the training camps where an estimated 20,000 terrorists were
trained in the late '90s, including some of those who struck us on
9/11. We captured and killed hundreds of al Qaeda. We put Osama bin
Laden on the run. We'll get him eventually. We've been in the hunt
ever since. And the final step in the process, once you've taken down
the old regime, the Taliban regime that sponsored and provided a
sanctuary for the al Qaeda, you have to put something in its place.
You can't just walk away from a situation like that because you'll have
a failed state, and they'll revert back to what they used to be -- a
breeding ground for terror, or a nation that is involved as a
dictatorship, and is involved, for example, in trying to acquire
weapons of mass destruction. So you have to worry about what we put in
place before we depart. Of course, the key there is to establish a
democratically elected government in Afghanistan and also in Iraq.
Now, the amazing thing is after a lot of hand-wringing -- it has
now been about three years since we launched into Afghanistan, six
months after we took Afghanistan, John Edwards was out saying, oh, it's
not going to work. Everything is turning to chaos, the Taliban are
going to take control again. Wrong. He was dead wrong. He's dead
wrong now when he wrings his hands and says, this is an impossible
task. Hard task, absolutely -- very hard thing to go. They've never
had free elections in Afghanistan in the 5,000-year history of the
country. Last Saturday they had one, first one ever. (Applause.)
Out of 10 million registered voters in Afghanistan, nearly half of
them are women. This is a society that until we went in and liberated
25 million people in Afghanistan, a society where women had absolutely
no role whatsoever, were severely punished for minor transgressions.
Today they can vote and participate in the political process in
Afghanistan. (Applause.)
Now, Iraq -- a somewhat different proposition in Iraq. Of course,
we had Saddam Hussein in power, a man who had started two wars, who for
12 years had defied the international community and violated U.N.
sanctions and refused to live up to the conditions he accepted at the
end of the Gulf War; a man who had previously produced and used weapons
of mass destruction, specifically chemical weapons against his own
people and against the Iranians; and a man who had a long history of
supporting terror. He has been carried by our State Department as a
state sponsor of terror for at least 15 years. He has in the past been
actively involved in making $25,000 payments to the families of suicide
bombers who would kill Israelis, for example. He has provided a
sanctuary for Abu Nidal, for Palestinian Islamic Jihad. And he had a
relationship with al Qaeda. You hear debates on the other side, was
there or was there not a relationship, George Tenet, director of the
CIA, testified two years ago in open session before the Senate foreign
relations committee and laid out the record of the 10-year relationship
between al Qaeda and Iraq. Those are the facts. And the fact is that
we went in and took down Saddam Hussein's regime. We did it because --
again, remembering what the biggest threat we're faced with is, the
idea of terrorists in our cities with a weapons of mass destruction, a
biological agent, chemical weapon, or a nuclear weapon. Iraq
represented the place where the nexus between WMD and the terrorists,
we felt was most likely to occur and transpire. Today, Saddam Hussein
is in jail, and the world is a whale of a lot better off for it.
(Applause.)
Now, when you have a President who speaks clearly who says what he
means and means what he says, and then follows it up with action as we
did in Afghanistan and Iraq, other positive things happen. And five
days after we found Saddam Hussein and dug him out of his hole in
Northern Iraq last December, Moammar Ghadafi, the leader of Libya, went
public and announced he was giving up all of his aspirations to acquire
weapons of mass destruction. (Applause.)
He'd spent millions over the years acquiring uranium, acquiring
centrifuges to enrich uranium, and acquiring a weapons design, a design
for a nuclear weapon, and building the capacity in Libya to produce
nuclear weapons, and then he saw George Bush's determination and the
capability of the United States military, and he looked at all of that,
and he decided that it was time to change course. And so he called --
he did not call the United Nations -- he contacted George Bush and Tony
Blair when it was time to surrender material. (Applause.)
And the other positive thing that happened was the network that had
provided him with that material headed by a man named A.Q. Khan, a
Pakistan citizen. He'd helped develop Pakistan's program. But then he
went off on his own and was selling this technology -- not only to
Libya, but also to Iran and North Korea. That network has now been
shut down. Mr. Khan is under house arrest in Pakistan; his network is
out of business. (Applause.)
So we're actively and aggressively addressing both the question of
the terror, of sponsors of terror, as well as, obviously the problem of
the proliferation of these deadly technologies. That's what George
Bush has done and has accomplished in three years. Now, we're going to
make a decision on November 2nd about the way forward, and whether or
not we're going to continue to pursue and active aggress program and
strategy, such as the President has designed and put in place, or
whether we're going to shift and change course. And the reason that I
think that is the choice is because I look at John Kerry, and I look at
his record, with respect to how he's come down on national security
over -- about the last 30 years, and how he's talked about the war on
terror. And frankly, I don't see anything in his record that leads me
to believe that he would be an aggressive implementer, if you will, of
the kind of strategy I think we need in order to make certain we win
the war on terror, that we destroy the terrorists, that we take down
those regimes that make the mistake of sponsoring or supporting terror,
and that we adequately safeguard the security of the United States. I
don't see it in John Kerry's record.
Now, let me be precise if I can. I want to emphasize here, I by no
means challenge his patriotism. I praised his military service in
Vietnam in my speech at the Republican Convention in New York City and
got applause for it from the Republicans gathered there. We've never,
never challenged his patriotism. I do challenge his judgment. I think
it's flawed. And I think going back to -- (Applause.) You can go back
to the early '70s when he ran for Congress the first time on a platform
that we shouldn't deploy U.S. forces without United Nations approval.
I think that was a mistake. 1984, when he ran for the Senate the first
time on a platform of cutting or eliminating most of the major weapons
systems that Ronald Reagan ordered up in order to equip the United
States military that led and contributed to our victory in the Cold
War. He was wrong on those issues, consistently. Or 1991, when Saddam
Hussein invaded Kuwait and was poised to dominate the Persian Gulf, of
course, we mounted an effort -- this was when I was Secretary of
Defense -- we mounted Operation Desert Storm, went in and kicked him
out of Kuwait, put together an international coalition, and so forth,
John Kerry voted against Operation Desert Storm. He wouldn't even
support military action then when it was a very clear-cut case. The
nation was behind it, et cetera. If we come on forward to 1993, the
first attack on the World Trade Center, John Kerry was a member of the
Senate intelligence committee. And as best I can tell, didn't attend a
single member -- a single meeting of the Senate intelligence committee
in the year after that attack. He did manage to offer up an amendment
to cut several billion dollars out of our intelligence budget, a move
that was so radical even Ted Kennedy wouldn't support it. (Laughter.)
That's the record. (Applause.)
Now, during the course of this campaign, he's tried very hard not
to talk about that record. You didn't see him in Boston at the
Democratic Convention talking about his service in the United States
Senate. He harked back to his service in Vietnam, which again, we
honor him for, as we do all our veterans. But the fact of the matter
is, he's tried very hard during the course of the campaign to talk
tough, during the course of the debates, for example, that he'll
actively and aggressively pursue the war on terror. But it's awfully
hard to take a little tough talk during the course of a 90-minute
debate and allow that to obscure a record of 30 years of coming down on
virtually the wrong side of every major national security issue.
Most recently, just last Sunday, he -- there was an article about
the Senator in The New York Times magazine. I'm sure nobody here reads
The New York Times. (Laughter.) But sometimes it's worth looking at.
But in this article, he talked about -- he was interviewed at length by
the journalist who wrote the article, and he talked about sort of what
his expectations were, or his aspirations with respect to pursuing the
war on terror. And what he said was he wanted to get terror back to
the point where it was viewed as a nuisance and, in effect, manageable,
controlled under manageable proportions and drew an analogy to local
law enforcement dealing with problems of illegal gambling and
prostitution. That's what he said. It's in the Sunday New York Times,
that concept that we could get terrorism back to a point where it was
just a nuisance, not a major problem for us.
Then I asked myself the question, I said, well, when was that?
When was terrorism just a nuisance? Obviously, I assume that that
means at some period prior to 9/11 there was a period of time there
where we didn't have to be quite so concerned about terrorism. And I
asked myself, well, what was that four years ago yesterday, when they
attacked the USS Cole off Yemen and killed 17 of our sailors and nearly
sunk the ship? Or was it back in 1998, a little over six years ago
when they attacked simultaneously two of our embassies in East Africa,
killed hundreds of people, including a number of Americans? Or maybe
it was 1993, the first attack on the World Trade Center, when they
tried to bring down the tower then -- it didn't work; they came back
eight years later to do the job -- when they took a truck load of
explosives and drove it underneath one of the World Trade Center
buildings and touched it off. Or maybe it was 1988, December, when
they took Pan Am 103 and knocked it out of the skies over Lockerbie,
Scotland. Or possibly 1983, when in Beirut in the spring, they first
attacked our embassy and killed a number of our people, and then that
fall, a suicide bomber, a truckload of explosives pulled into a
building housing our Marines and we lost 241 Marines that morning. It
doesn't strike me that you can ever think of terror and what it
represents as a nuisance. And if you've got a mind set that thinks
that way, that believes that there's a point at which you can take this
problem that we're now faced with in a global war on terror, and
pigeonhole it like that, and treat it like that, and categorize it like
that, that says to me that the individual who entertains those thoughts
isn't as serious as I want my Commander-in-Chief to be in pursuing the
war on terror. (Applause.)
Now, this is a global conflict. Nobody should underestimate that
at all. They've come not only, obviously, after the United States.
But we've seen attacks since 9/11 in Madrid, Casablanca, Mombassa in
East Africa, Istanbul, Baghdad, Riyadh, Jakarta, Bali, most recently in
Beslan in Southern Russia, and of course then, just within the last
week or so, the attack in Egypt, down near the Israeli border, which is
still being looked at in terms of who is responsible, although there's
-- I think -- substantial evidence that suggests that that, too, was an
al Qaeda operation.
The decision you're going to make on November 2nd is to pick that
individual who is going to be our Commander-in-Chief, and who, in fact,
is going to be charged with the responsibilities of defending the
nation and pursuing our adversaries and doing whatever is necessary to
make certain that they never get off the kind of attack that would be
devastating for our communities here in the United States were they
able to do that. It's about as serious a decision as anybody is ever
asked to make. And we're all going to make it as Americans two weeks
from next Tuesday. And so I'd ask you just to think about when you
contemplate the choice that we're going to make because I do think it
is about the most important election I've ever participated in, and I
say that not just because my name is on the ballot, but I can't
remember a time during all the years I've been in public service when
we had what I think is such a clear-cut choice.
Finally, let me close today and then open it up to questions.
(Applause.) Open it up to questions, and simply say that in addition,
obviously, to the President who I think has done a superb job as our
Commander-in-Chief these last three-and-a-half years, it is absolutely
essential, as well, that we thank the men and women in uniform and
their families who have sacrificed so much on behalf of all of us.
(Applause.)
So with that, I'll stop. And we're supposed to have some proctors
in the audience, people with microphones in these attractive orange
jerseys -- (laughter) -- with the numbers on them. If you've got
something you'd like to say, just grab the attention of one of the
proctors. They'll bring a mike over to you. And we'll start back here
with number three.
Q Hello, Mr. Vice President. Welcome to Pennsylvania. You
were my boss when I fought in Desert Storm with the 24th Infantry
Division, and one of the lasting feelings that I had throughout that
experience was that our soldiers felt that we were probably the most
well-taken-care-of soldiers perhaps in the history of our country, in
that the decisions that were made were made with the greatest thought
towards the well being of the soldier. As a prior military person, I
can't even imagine not casting my vote for anyone other than yourself
and President Bush. (Applause.)
And my question is -- well, I'm a little surprised that more of an
issue hasn't been made with what the actual military people think of
who would be the best Commander-in-Chief, rather than other people who
weren't in there, who didn't experience and see what happened. Do you
have any comments on that?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, we're -- obviously, we steer clear of
seeking any kind of an endorsement from active duty military. That
wouldn't be appropriate -- improper to ask them that, and I have a
hunch how I think most of them feel. But we'd never ask, if I could
put it in those terms.
I look for -- well, I look to men like Tommy Franks, for example,
who was our commander in both Afghanistan and Iraq, who oversaw that
operation, career military officer, now retired, out of the military,
spoke at our convention in New York City, and I think has subsequent to
that been a very effective spokesman on behalf of the ticket. And
we're proud to have their support.
But also I want to emphasize where the military is concerned, the
men and women in uniform, if anybody, have earned the right to
participate in this process, and to make their views and choices
known. And I wouldn't criticize any of them, whatever political faith
they may espouse, or whoever they may want to vote for. That's
certainly their prerogative. And we welcome their support to the
extent they want to support our ticket, as well as we do for everybody
else, too.
MRS. CHENEY: Dick, can I ask a question? I keep hearing John
Kerry and John Edwards talk about Tora Bora and Osama bin Laden, and
what is the story? They keep making it look as though somehow Iraq
distracted us from capturing Osama bin Laden. They keep saying that.
What's the story?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, it's not true. And if you look
carefully, Tommy Franks has addressed it. He was the man in charge of
both operations. And the fact of the matter is that we clearly have
the capacity to deal with both Afghanistan and Iraq because we've done
it. And the charge they make that somehow this is a distraction, I can
remember John Edwards in the period -- I guess, this was fall of '02,
came about the time that they voted for the authorization to use force
against Saddam Hussein in response to this very question, can we do
both, saying, absolutely we can do both. We need to do both. They
were for it before they were against. (Laughter and applause.) And I
just think that's a fallacious charge. It doesn't stand up. Somebody
back here, number four?
Q Mr. Vice President, my question is a little bit different.
Do you foresee any funding that will be made available to the prison
systems, whether it be at the federal level, or right down at the
county level for different federal mandates that the prison systems
have to meet?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: I'm not familiar with any specific proposal
that's pending. I'm trying to think back. I talked with Governor
Schwarzenegger about this in California, because they've had a problem
there -- you may be referring to a similar problem here where you have
illegal immigrants who come in and commit a crime and end up being
imprisoned for their crime here in the United States. And the question
is whether or not the federal government has an obligation, and I think
some of us believe it does, to contribute to cost of prosecuting and
the sentencing and holding that individual, because the federal
government, after all, was supposedly responsible for controlling our
borders in the first place, and keeping illegal aliens from immigrating
into the United States. So there's been a battle here, a discussion or
debate. And I know in the past, I believe there has been some funding
provided. I'm unaware right now of any proposal right now to increase
that level of funding. But we'll take a look at it.
We got somebody over here? Yes.
Q Mr. Vice President, first I'd like to thank you for your many
years of service to our country, and you and the President do, indeed,
make us very proud to be Americans. (Applause.)
I was wondering if you could comment on the -- what I feel are the
original "death to America" crowds, the Iranians. And what is going to
happen there?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: What's going to happen in Iran? Well, the
situation in Iran is worrisome because of their apparent determination
to try to develop their own nuclear weapons capability. They deny it.
They claim they're simply developing nuclear power, and that they're
not going to enrich uranium to weapons grade. It's a little hard to
understand why they need nuclear power since they're sitting on top of
so much oil and gas. But they are pursuing, and it is troublesome for
us, in part, because we think Iran equipped with nuclear weapons
significantly increases the threat level in that part of the world.
We've worked on it diplomatically with the British, the French, and the
Germans whose foreign ministers have been negotiated with the
Iranians. We've recently had the matter before the Board of Governors
of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and making clear to the
Iranians that there's no percentage in their trying to develop nuclear
weapons, that if they want to have normal discourse with
the rest of the world, if they want to have normal kinds of
relationships, then they need to change their course of action. And of
course, there are sanctions currently imposed on Iran by the United
States.
The next step will be probably in November when I would expect
another meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency Board of
Governors. And if the Iranians haven't lived up to some of the
commitments and obligations they've made by then, then the next step
would be to refer the whole matter to the U.N. Security Council where
they would consider the application of international economic sanctions
on Iran. And we would like to be able to resolve the matter
diplomatically. That's the effort that is now underway, and I think
nearly everybody in the region out there, as well as increasingly the
Europeans understand that a nuclear-armed Iran isn't anything that
anybody should welcome. And we need to do whatever we have to do,
basically. As I say, we're working it diplomatically to try other
resolve that matter.
Number two, somebody.
Q Thank you. And I wanted to congratulate your beautiful
grandchildren, and I appreciated that you shared them with us today.
Thank you.
As a school board member of 12 years, I can say that No Child Left
Behind has greatly empowered public education to make sure that our
teachers are trained in effective teaching methods, that our
curriculums are aligned to the standards, and that our test scores are
raised. And I want to thank you for that piece of legislation.
We've been given the challenge to have all children proficient by
2014. My question is: how can you help us with those children who
will never be proficient by 2014? How can we, on the local level, get
the funding we need to educate those special needs students so that
even though they're not reaching what the federal government has
declared as proficient, they're reaching their own goals and achieving
those? How can you help us with that?
MRS. CHENEY: I followed education -- Dick asked me if I'd like to
talk here. I followed education since we were in Texas. And I watched
Governor Bush in Texas really bring, for the first time, high standards
and accountability to that system with good results. And I know he's
very interested in special needs children and has increased funding for
special needs children even above and beyond the funding that's gone
into elementary and secondary education. So his heart is with those
kids, and with the teachers and teachers' aides who are working with
them.
One of the things I point to with great pride, one of the groups --
or some of the groups that were leaving behind, before the President
came forward with standards and accountability -- Hispanic kids and
African American kids. As an educator, you know about the achievement
gap, which is something that we all know has to be closed. All kids
can achieve mightily. We have to encourage them to. And what I've
been especially heartened as is the early results coming from a study
by the great city schools, for example, that shows that all kids are
doing better with No Child Left Behind, and that African American kids
and Latino children are beginning to catch up. And that is a wonderful
thing for our whole society. I will forever proud of George Bush has
done in our elementary schools, and I am looking forward to what he
plans to do in the next four years, which is bring the same ideas,
standards and accountabilities to our secondary schools, so our high
schools will also be the best in the world. (Applause.)
Q Hello, Mr. Vice President. I'd like to welcome you to
Meadville. I've lived here my whole life, and I'm proud of it. My
question for you today is more of a domestic issue. As our population
ages and Americans continue to live longer and longer, we'll obviously
see the cost of Medicare, Social Security, and now our prescription
drug benefits increase dramatically. So my question is, how do you
reconcile this with younger voters like myself who ultimately will bear
a tax burden for this?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, we think obviously we've got an area --
when you look at Social Security and Medicare, I think for the current
generation receiving those benefits, they can have a high degree of
confidence that they're secure. The funds are there. And I think one
of the landmark achievements of the President's first term has been the
prescription drug benefit under Medicare that will kick in now in '06.
We've already got the prescription -- Medicare prescription drug cards
available, and some 40 million Americans will be eligible for
prescription drugs benefits under Medicare in the future. And that's
important because Medicare used to fund things like heart bypass
surgery, but it didn't fund the statins, the drugs that might make it
possible for you to avoid it altogether. And we've addressed that
problem there, and it's an important one.
But you're right, as you look down the road, both with respect to
Social Security and Medicare, and focus on the generation your age, or
people in their 20s and 30s, we're going to run into trouble because,
in fact, the level of benefits that have been promised exceeds the
expected revenue that's currently there -- that will be expected to be
there to meet it.
What the President wants to do, and what we talked about in the
last campaign, and we'll talk about and work on again in a second term
is we think it's important to provide an opportunity for that younger
generation to be able to invest in what we call personal retirement
accounts. That is to take a portion of the payroll tax at their
discretion. That wouldn't be -- they wouldn't have to do it, but if
they wanted to, they could, and invest it in approved plans. And you
ought to be able to earn a much higher return that you'll get by simply
putting into Social Security. This is a long-term proposition. As I
say, it's the kind of thing that would apply to somebody in your age
group, or my own kids. But we think it offers the opportunity both to
give you something that you've got a personal stake in, and that would
provide a higher rate of return and help close some of that revenue
gap, if you will, that's going to be down the road there 30 or 40 years
in the future. We do need to address it. But I think we can.
I've been through the exercise in the past. When I was a
congressman back in the '80s, we hit a rough patch there. And at one
point, there was a serious question about whether or not we could
actually get the Social Security checks out, and we needed to reform
the system. And we did. And so -- and it has worked, I think, very
well ever since. I think a great many Americans, including my parents,
used to depend upon -- rely upon Social Security. And it's absolutely
vital for our population. It's a promise and a commitment that was
made some time ago, and it will be kept. (Applause.)
MODERATOR: Mr. Vice President, to keep you on schedule. We have
time for one more question.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: All right, thank you, John. Somebody back
here.
Q Mr. Vice President, and Mrs. Cheney, welcome to
Pennsylvania. I am also from Warren, Pennsylvania. And I had the
great honor to serve with the 101st Airborne Division during Desert
Storm. And I want to thank you -- (Applause.) And I want to thank you
for your leadership then, and I want to thank you and the President for
the leadership that you are demonstrating in this global war on
terror. My question is, we hear a lot on the day-to-day happening in
the war. But can you explain to us the strategic level importance of a
free Iraq and a free Afghanistan in the pursuit of the global war on
terror, and how that might differ from your competitors, Kerry and
Edwards?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Certainly. First of all, let me thank you and
also member of the 24th Division over here. Both organizations did
great work in Desert Storm and we appreciate very much your service.
(Applause.)
The basic strategic objective, obviously, in addition to going
after the terrorists, and going after those that sponsor terror and
discouraging that kind of behavior clearly by taking care of those who
have, in fact, participated in, or supported those kinds of activities,
the essential element is to establish democratically elected
governments in Iraq and Afghanistan.
And that's because we believe -- and it's an article of faith with
the President and I think he's absolutely right -- that the best
antidote to terror is freedom, that free societies don't breed terror,
that the kind of dictatorship that we saw both in Afghanistan, under
the Taliban, motivated primarily by a very extreme view of the Islamic
faith; or the kind of dictatorship Saddam Hussein ran in Iraq, where he
also provide a safe harbor for terrorists, and obviously produced and
used WMD, that those kinds of developments won't occur if the Iraqi
people and the Afghan people have the opportunity to elect their own
governments, and to establish regimes that have control over their
sovereign territory, that aren't a threat to their neighbors, and don't
become the breeding grounds, if you will, for the kinds of folks who
attacked us on 9/11. And that's why it's so important -- that last
step, and why we're so bullish on what happened in Afghanistan this
weekend.
In Iraq, we're pursuing the same general strategy, that is to say
we've got a Prime Minister in place now, an interim government. Mr.
Allawi was here recently to address a joint session of Congress.
They've been in business, the interim government, a little over 90
days. They were -- turned over power to them at the end of June. Now,
all the Iraqi ministers -- all of the ministries in the government are
run by Iraqis. They've started the process of planning to put together
an election. There should be elections in Iraq in January that will
elect a constitutional assembly. They'll write a constitution, and
then have elections at the end of next year for your first
democratically elected government under that new constitution in Iraq.
That's the plan and the rough timetable we're on.
It will be difficult from time to time. It's going to be three
yards and a cloud of dust. There are no touchdown passes in this
business, partly because our adversaries, the remnants of the old
regime both in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the jihadists, the
terrorists who've been operating alongside them, will do everything
they can to disrupt that process. They know that if we're successful
in establishing a democratically elected government in a place like
Afghanistan, they're going to be out of business. And we intercepted a
message earlier this year, for example. It came from Mr. Zarqawi --
Zarqawi is somebody you've heard about. He was running -- he's called
an al Qaeda associate. He was running one of the training camps in
Afghanistan before 9/11. After we went into Afghanistan, he fled to
Baghdad. He operated out of Baghdad then pretty much ever since,
oversaw a poisons factory that was operating in Northeastern Iraq
producing ricin and such. And he's now the man probably responsible
more than just about anybody else for most of the car bombings in Iraq,
and he's the man that you will occasionally see on the evening news
beheading hostages. He's the worst of the bad actors, I think, in
Iraq. He sent a message last -- earlier this year that we
intercepted. The message was on its way to senior officials of al
Qaeda, bin Laden, and it basically said that if we were able to
establish a government that could exercise control over Iraq, that he
was out of business. He was going to have to pack his bags and leave
the country. And we hope we get him before he has a chance to leave.
(Applause.)
But it's so important for people to understand that we know it's
hard. What we can't tolerate, what we can't accept as a nation,
though, is the naysayers who want to wring their hands and say, well,
it will never work. You'll never hold a free election in Afghanistan.
Well, we just did. And 10 million Afghans participated in that
process. And now you'll hear the same thing about Iraq -- never going
to work, can't possibly do it. I think they're wrong. And the
President believes deeply in this process. I do, too. I have the
privilege 20 years ago of going to El Salvador when we first -- we had
the all trouble in Central America back in the early '80s. We had
guerrilla insurgencies, we had -- in El Salvador, you had 75,000 people
killed. Insurgents controlled about a third of the country, and then
we held free elections. I went down as a member of Congress, and an
observer of those elections. And it was something to behold the
tremendous drive people had to get to the polls and vote, to exercise
that right they'd never before had. And it didn't matter -- the
guerrillas would come in and shoot up the polling place, and people
would flee. And as soon as the guerrillas left, boy, they were back in
line again, waiting for a chance to vote. Twenty years ago in El
Salvador, it worked. And it's going to work in Afghanistan, and we're
going to make it work in Iraq. And there's no better antidote to the
problem we're faced with long-term than being able to establish there,
in the heart of the Middle East democratically elected governments that
will serve as a model for other regimes in the area and offer people
for the first time ever an opportunity to the kinds of problems that
have been developed over there in years past. And it's that -- it's
the President's vision. It's his strategic objective. It's the plan
he's put in place. It's the strategy that we're pursuing.
John Kerry says he's got a plan. Has anybody yet heard what John
Kerry's plan is? I haven't. (Laughter and applause.)
Final point, and then I'll stop, you asked specifically about the
contrast or the comparison with Senator Kerry, George Bush is a man who
makes decisions and sticks with them, and carries through on them -- no
matter what the pressures of the moment might be, no matter how much
criticism or flak he takes, some of us think it's his mother coming
through in him. (Laughter.) Barbara is pretty tough, those of you --
and but it's an extraordinarily valuable trait to have in a President
of the United States. It's essential. All our great Presidents have
had it.
I look at John Kerry and I see a man who voted to send the troops
into combat, and then when the question came on the money to support
the troops, the $87 billion for the equipment and the resources and
ammunition and so forth they needed to prosecute the war, he voted no.
And I couldn't figure out for the life of me why he would do that.
There were only four senators who did that, voted for committing the
troops, and then voted against providing them with the equipment and
ammunition and spare parts, body armor, they needed once they got
there.
And then it dawned on me what was happening was in the Democratic
primaries, Howard Dean, the anti-war candidate was running away with
the vote. And he was stealing the march on Senator Kerry, and Senator
Edwards -- and they're two of the four who voted yes to commit the
troops, and then against funding. And it strikes me that he has over
the years made decisions oftentimes as a result or a response to the
kind of political pressure that he did then. And of course, the
conclusion that leads to is if he can't stand up to the pressure of
Howard Dean in the Democratic primaries, how can be possibly be
expected to stand up to the likes of al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden? It
doesn't -- (Applause.)
So I think we've got exactly what we need in a Commander-in-Chief.
I am convinced that the nation will be better off and safer and more
secure for our kids and grandkids if we stay the course we're on, and
that we will honor the sacrifice that so many have been asked to make
by completing the mission.
Thank you very much. (Applause.)
END 12:3O P.M. EDT
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