For Immediate Release
Office of the Vice President
September 29, 2004
Vice President and Mrs. Cheney's Remarks and Q&A; at a Town Hall Meeting in Duluth, Minnesota
Cirrus Design Corporation
Duluth, Minnesota
10:55 A.M. CDT
MRS. CHENEY: Well, thank you so much that great welcome. It is a
beautiful day here in Duluth, and we are so happy to be here.
It has been a privilege for Dick and me to travel all across this
wonderful country. And I can't tell you how many times when we're
going through the many, many beautiful places that America has, we say
to ourselves how lucky we are to be American. And when I try to make a
list of all the things that I feel fortunate about, all the things that
I feel proud about -- proud about, especially, -- right at the top of
that list is our President, George W. Bush. (Applause.)
He has been a magnificent leader over these past four years. And
if you don't mind my saying so, the Vice President is no slouch
either. (Laughter and applause.)
Well, I get the job of introducing Dick because I have known him
for so long. I have known him since he was 14 years old, and his job
that summer, that school year when I first knew him, his job was
sweeping out the Ben Franklin store in Casper, Wyoming, our hometown.
And I have known him through many jobs since. I've known him since he
was digging ditches at the Central Wyoming Fair and Rodeo Grounds,
outside our hometown of Casper. And I've known him since he was
loading bentonite --hundred-pound sacks of bentonite into railroad
cars. And I've known him since he was building power line all across
the West to help pay his way through school. And I mention all those
things because I think that when you grow up working hard, you learn
some really important lessons. And one of those lessons is how
important it is for the hard working men and women of this country to
get to keep as much of their paychecks as possible. (Applause.)
So it has been a great honor and privilege for us to be involved in
this presidential campaign, a distinguishing mark of our civilization,
our country is getting to choose our leaders. And it is a great source
of pride and honor to me to get to introduce to you my husband, Dick
Cheney, the Vice President of the United States. (Applause.)
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Thank you. Thank you all very much. And,
Lynne, thank you for the fine introduction. She wouldn't go out with
me until I was 17. (Laughter.)
But I often tell people we have a marriage that came about because
Dwight Eisenhower got elected President of the United States. Because
in 1952, when Eisenhower ran for President, I was a youngster living in
Lincoln, Nebraska with my folks. Dad worked for the Soil Conservation
Service. Eisenhower got elected, reorganized the government, Dad got
transferred to Casper, Wyoming, which is where I met Lynn. And we grew
up together, went to high school together, and a few of weeks ago
celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary. (Applause.) I explained to a
group the other night that if it hadn't been for Eisenhower's election
victory, 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.)
Well, we're delighted to be here today in Duluth. I want to thank
the Klapmeiers for allowing us to come here and spend some time at
Cirrus. This is a great company. They've got a great track record and
have done some superb work building quality products. One of the great
American success stories that you find as you travel all across the
country. And we're delighted to be here today. And I want to thank
all of you at Cirrus for allowing us to come by and for being part of
the effort here this morning.
We're obviously embarked upon the final weeks of the campaign. And
we're doing a number of these events across the country. Of course,
the President is getting ready for his debate tomorrow night. And mine
will be next Tuesday with my opponent, John Edwards.
John, of course -- Senator Edwards -- I shouldn't call him John. I
don't know him that well. But Senator Edwards, of course, it is
alleged got his job because he's charming, sexy, good looking and has
great hair. I said, how do you think I got the job? (Laughter.) Why
do they laugh?
But this is an important campaign this year. And you need to have
a sense of humor in this business, so we need to have a few laughs
along the way. But it's also very serious business. The decision
we're going to make on November 2nd is one of great significance for
the nation, and may indeed be the most important election at least that
I can recall in my lifetime in terms of the decisions we're going to
make about absolutely vital issues and the course we're going to set
for this nation in the years ahead.
And what I'd like to do this morning is take a few minutes, share
some thoughts with you about a part of that decision that we're going
to make on November 2nd, why I think it's so important. And then we'll
throw it open to questions and allow you to ask questions or make
comments, have a bit of an exchange or dialogue. These sessions are a
lot better if you don't have to just listen to me ramble on endlessly,
but rather get a chance for a good exchange. So we'll do that this
morning.
But I want to begin, first of all, by talking about what I think is
at the heart of the election, the significance of this election this
year, and that's the basic fundamental question about what the national
security strategy and policy will be for the United States in the years
ahead. The most significant set of developments I think that the
President had I have had to deal with since we were sworn in, that were
not anticipated when we were elected four years ago, of course, are all
of those events that began with 9/11 and all that that's entailed for
the country. So that's what I really want to focus on this morning.
If you think about it, there have been times in our history when we
come to sort of watershed moments. Something happens that constitutes
a new threat to the United States, or a fundamentally altered
international situation and we have to think new thoughts about our
strategy, about how we conduct ourselves in the world, what kind of
military forces we need, what the threats are, and I think we've gone
through one of those periods.
I think back to the time right after World War II, for example,
after we'd won the war against Germany and Japan, our troops came
home. And then within a matter of a few years, all of a sudden we were
faced with the Cold War, a Soviet Union that had occupied half of
Europe, that was acquiring nuclear weapons, and we had to put together
an entirely new national security strategy for the United States, a
policy of deterrence to deter the Soviets from launching an attack
against the U.S., of containment -- established NATO, a series of
alliances around the world to protect us against the Soviet threat,
created the Department of Defense, in 1947 -- the Central Intelligence
Agency, reconfigured our military forces and so forth. Those policies
we put in place then lasted for about the next 40 years, and were
supported by Republican and Democratic administrations alike -- the
basic, fundamental foundation of national security for the United
States really until the Soviet Union collapsed and the Cold War ended
in the 1989-90 time frame.
And I think we're again at one of those moments, in connection with
the war on terror, the nature of the threat we face today, and what has
emerged if you will for us since 9/11 that we now have to deal with
And of course, 9/11 was significant because it brought home, I
think, to everybody the fact that there was, indeed, an organization
out there -- in this case, we called them the al Qaeda -- that had
designs on the United States, that had managed to organize an attack
against us that killed 3,000 of our people in less than two hours on
the morning of 9/11, more folks than we lost at Pearl Harbor, the worst
attack ever on American soil by a foreign power.
And when that occurred, of course, we had to come to grips with
that threat and to recognize that the biggest threat we face today
would be a group of terrorists in the middle of one of our own cities
with a weapon of mass destruction, with a biological or a chemical
agent, or conceivably, even a nuclear weapon, and that that kind of
threat, if it were to occur could conceivably result in the death of
hundreds of thousands of Americans in a few hours, not just 3,000. And
so the scale of the threat is very different than what we've dealt with
before, and the nature of the defenses we need to mount against it,
obviously, are fundamentally altered, too.
In response to 9/11, we did several things. The President, of
course, insisted on doing everything we could to harden the target here
at home, to make the U.S. a tougher target for our adversaries, created
the Department of Homeland Security, passed the Patriot Act that gave
law enforcement the tools they need to be able to prosecute terrorists,
strengthened our intelligence agencies, got a better mechanism in place
to coordinate between the CIA and the FBI, beefed up our Border Patrol,
passed Project BioShield, which provides funds and authority to
research and develop defenses against biological weapons and so forth.
All of that is very good. But the President also made a decision
that I think is absolutely essential, and that is that there's no such
thing as a perfect defense, that if we're successful 99 percent of the
time against our adversaries, the 1 percent that gets through given the
nature of the threat could be devastating. So you cannot accept a
situation where even a 1 percent possibility of success on the part of
our adversaries. And therefore, it was essential that we also go on
offense. And that has been the biggest departure, if you will, from
the past in terms of what George Bush and those of us who work for him
have done since 9/11. By go on offense, we mean that we would use our
military force as well as our intelligence services and so forth to
aggressively go after the terrorists wherever they reside, wherever
they train, wherever we find them. And secondly, that we would
confront those who support terror -- those states that sponsor terror,
who've provided safe harbor and sanctuary for terrorists, who
conceivably have provided financial assistance or arms, or could
eventually share that deadly technology with the terrorists also become
a target of our interest.
And based on that fundamental strategic decision, we then clearly
went into Afghanistan, took down the Taliban regime, captured and
killed hundreds of al Qaeda, closed the training camps in Afghanistan
where the terrorists had trained to kill Americans on 9/11, and where
some 20,000 terrorists were trained in the late 1990s. And in the
aftermath of that, then, we also took one additional step, and that is
to establish a democratically elected government in Afghanistan. It's
not enough for us to go and simply kill terrorists, or to topple
governments that have supported terror and thereby threaten the United
States, you also have to put something in its place. You can't simply
do the first two steps and walk away and leave a failed state behind
where it will revert back to what it was before, a breeding ground for
terror, or conceivably become a dictatorship of some kind.
And so what we've done in Afghanistan, we've stood up an interim
government. They've written a constitution. They've registered 10
million voters, first time in history, over 40 percent of them, women.
And on October 9th, there will be free elections in Afghanistan. And
by the end of the year, there will be a democratically elected
government in Afghanistan where they used to train terrorists.
(Applause.)
On Iraq, slightly different situation -- but in Iraq, we had in
Saddam Hussein a man who had started two wars, who had traditionally
been a state sponsor of terror, always carried by our State Department
as a sponsor of terror, the home to the Abu Nidal organization, the
Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a man who paid $25,000 to the families of
suicide bombers who would kill Israelis, had a relationship with al
Qaeda, a man who had previously produced and used weapons of mass
destruction against his own people and against the Iranians, and who
had defied the international community for 12 years. We went in and
took down the regime of Saddam Hussein. Today, he's in jail -- which
is exactly where he belongs. (Applause.) And we're now actively and
aggressively working to stand up a new democratic government in Iraq.
This is hard work. This is not an easy task. You're going to find
people who say, oh, my gosh, you can't do it. It's too hard. There
will be a civil war, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. You can always
find somebody who can argue against what needs to be done here. But it
needs to be done. And having -- (Applause.) And having gone this far,
it can be done. And again, think about where we are in Iraq. We've
got an interim government stood up composed of Iraqis, headed up by a
man named Ayad Allawi. He is the Prime Minister. He has now appointed
a Cabinet. The Iraqis control all the government ministries now, have
since the end of June. They've been in business 90 days -- probably a
little soon to make a final judgment about how they're going to do.
They're just getting started. We've got a lot of people out there who
want say, oh, it's a failure. They don't have any idea whether it's a
failure or not. These folks have just barely gotten started, gotten
their feet on the ground and they're doing a good job.
Allawi is a very tough man. He fled Iraq many, many years ago
during Saddam's rule, went to London and was living in London. And one
night when he was in bed, in London, woke up to find assassins in his
room sent by Saddam Hussein armed with axes. They tried to hack him to
death -- he and his wife. He survived, but he spent nearly a year in
the hospital recovering from his wounds. And his wife never really
recovered psychologically from the event. She died a few years later.
Very tough customer, Ayad Allawi -- he's willing to go back to Iraq,
and knows he's the target of the terrorists and the former regime
elements who'd like nothing better than to do him in. And he's back
there putting his life on the line to create a democracy in Iraq and to
give the people of Iraq a chance to live in freedom under a democratic
form of government.
Now, it is in our interest that that happen. We don't want to see
Iraq revert back to what it was before. And the Iraqis have got a good
start. They've not -- we were told we couldn't stand up an interim
government, that they couldn't. Well, they've done that. We were
told, you'll never transfer power to them on June 30th. Well, we've
done that. We were told, you can't hold a national assembly of Iraq.
Well, they've done that. They will have elections in January. That
group that is elected then will write a constitution, and by the end of
next year, they'll have new elections under an Iraqi-drafted
constitution, and you'll have a democratically elected government in
place in Iraq. (Applause.)
Now, the challenge for us going forward here is to make certain we
get it right. We have to continue to do whatever is necessary for as
long as necessary to get these people back on their feet. And there
are two major tasks they have to accomplish. They've got to take on
responsibility for their own governance. And they've got to take on
responsibility for their own security. So both in Afghanistan and
Iraq, we're spending a lot of time and effort, standing up and training
Afghan and Iraqi security forces that can take over basic fundamental
responsibilities for their security. And that's a major task for us.
We want to get it done just as quickly as we can. We don't want to
stay a day long than we have to, but we want to stay as long as
necessary. You'll find some people -- I heard John Kerry this morning
on Good Morning America for example, say his objective is to get the
American troops home. We clearly want them home, but that's not the
way to state the objective. The objective is to finish the mission, to
get the job done, to do it right. (Applause.)
Now, the biggest cost of all, the burden for this situation,
prosecuting the war on terror and doing what needs to be done in
Afghanistan and Iraq falls first and foremost on the armed services, on
the men and women who wear the uniform of the United States military,
and on their families. And we all owe them an enormous debt of
gratitude for what they've done for all of us. (Applause.)
The -- some have suggested that we need to pursue a different
policy. I think, frankly, there are still a lot of folks out there
that have not made the transition to the post-9/11 perspective, if you
will. They still have what I call a pre-9/11 mind set. They still
think it's an option for us to pull back, sort of retreat behind our
oceans, that we can live comfortably here at home. We don't have to be
engaged out there around the world. We don't have to be prosecuting
the war on terror in the far corners of the globe. I think they're
wrong. I think that mind set, that attitude is flawed because all it
does is postpone the ultimate day of reckoning. The United States of
America cannot fail to be engaged in the world. We're the world's
leading trading nation, the most powerful nation on Earth. We do
business all over the world. Our ideas, our culture, our beliefs, our
economic products and services and so forth, we are the dominant power
on the face of the Earth today. And you can't allow a bunch of
terrorists to force the United States to retreat behind its oceans and
sit here and act as though we're safe and maybe they'll hit us last.
The fact is what we're engaged in here is a global conflict.
Remember, since 9/11, since they hit New York and Washington, they hit
Madrid, and Casablanca, and Mombassa, and Riyadh, and Jakarta, and
Istanbul, and Bali, and Baghdad, and Beslan -- most recently -- in
Russia, where they killed approximately 350 people one morning, most of
them school children. That's the nature of the enemy and the adversary
we face. The kinds of people who will go on television and make a tape
of themselves beheading an individual and then broadcast it because
they want to -- through fear and intimidation -- they want force us to
change our policies and withdraw, if you will, from the outside world
and retreat, in effect, behind our own boundaries.
That won't work. And as I say, all it will do is increase the
ultimate cost of coming to grips with this problem because sooner or
later you do have to face it. And it's better for us to face it today
and to deal with it today when we've got friends and allies all over
the world out there who are willing to work with us on it than it would
be to postpone action and to wait.
And the other thing, obviously, that's at stake here is to
understand that if we don't take them on over there, we may well end up
having to fight with them here in the streets of our own cities, as we
did on 9/11. And that's not an acceptable outcome. Ultimately, of
course, what is at risk here, what is at stake are the safety and
security of our kids and grandkids for generations to come. And the
United States can win this battle. There is no doubt in my mind. It's
absolutely the right thing to do, and we're on the right course. And
that's the course we need to stay on.
Now, when we make a decision on November 2nd, we'll be choosing
between that policy and that strategy that I believe is working, that
the President laid out for us in the aftermath of 9/11, or we're going
to shift gears and pick somebody else as our Commander-in-Chief.
Now, I've looked carefully at John Kerry's record and let me say
today, as I've said -- I said it in my speech at the convention in New
York a few weeks ago -- that we respect John Kerry's military service,
as we do for all of our veterans, appreciate very much his service in
Vietnam. Nobody in connection with this campaign has ever challenged
his patriotism or his service to the nation. What we challenge is his
judgment and what he operated, did, votes he cast, how he functioned
for the 20 years he was in the United States Senate, where he had an
opportunity time after time to vote on issues that deal directly with
national security -- on weapons systems, on strategy, on the commitment
of forces, on when the United States ought to be aggressively involved
and so forth. And if you look at that record, what it shows is during
those years in the Senate, back in the '80s, most of the time, he
opposed the major weapons systems and programs that Ronald Reagan
recommended and put forth that were instrumental to our being able to
succeed in the Cold War. Many of those systems that we're using today
he opposed when we were starting up.
In 1991, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and the question before
the Congress was whether or not we would use military force to liberate
Kuwait and send Saddam packing, Desert Storm, John Kerry voted no. In
the two years that he's been campaigning for President, I think
everybody knows he's been all over the lot in terms of whether or not
he's for or against what we've been doing in the war on terror. He
voted to authorize the use of force, and then later on announced he was
an anti-war candidate, and then voted against funding for the troops
once we committed them to combat, and then when asked knowing
everything he knows now, would he have voted the way he did then, and
he said yes. And this morning, Diane Sawyer interviewed him on Good
Morning America and asked him the same question, knowing everything you
know now, would you have voted that way, and he said, no. (Laughter.)
He's changed his mind on many occasion. I think what's required in a
President is the ability to make a decision, to take a position, and to
convey to the American people and to the troops who are the ones who
have to put their lives on the line to carry out the policy, and to our
adversaries what the position of the United States is. That's exactly
what we've got in George Bush, a man who means what he says and says
what he means. (Applause.)
I don't see those same qualities in John Kerry. And I think when
it comes time to pick a Commander-in-Chief for the next four years,
who's going to basically set strategy and a policy that may, in fact,
be the key to defending the nation for the next 30 or 40 or 50 years,
that we've got a pretty clear choice on November 2nd. In my mind,
given my priorities, what I worry about, that is an absolutely crucial
part of the decision that we, as Americans, are going to make.
I think it's very, very important that we get it right. I think we
will. I feel very good about the state of the race. I tell people
that things look good. As Lynne and I travel the country -- we've been
in some 48 states now, in this campaign -- and things look very good
not only here in Minnesota, but even in Massachusetts. (Laughter and
applause.)
There was this news account a few weeks ago, as the Democratic
Convention ended in Boston, as the delegates were leaving the hall,
they stopped a Boston policeman and asked for directions. And he said,
"Leave here and go vote Republican." (Laughter and applause.) True
story. (Applause.) So we're eager to have the support of that
policeman, as well as Republicans, Democrats and independents from all
across America.
But it is an important decision that we get to make. We're
enormously privileged to be Americans, to live in the country we do and
to have the opportunity and the responsibility to participate in this
process. Don't let anybody tell you what a handful of people does
doesn't matter -- remember the last election? Five hundred and
thirty-seven votes in Florida determined the outcome of who was going
to be President of the United States for the next four years. Every
hour of volunteer time, every dollar contributed, every vote,
everything matters. And it's our privilege to live in a country where
we can exercise that responsibility. It's a gift from the generations
that have gone before, and it's one we need to exercise and nurture if
we're going to make certain that it's in as good of shape for our kids
and grandkids as it's been for us.
So with that, let me stop and we'll go to a Q&A; session. We've got
proctors in the audience with microphones -- you'll note they're the
people in the orange shirts.
MRS. CHENEY: Dick, what do those orange shirts remind you of?
(Laughter.) I'll say it. (Laughter.) How about John Kerry's suntan?
(Laughter and applause.)
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Oh, I may have to disassociate myself from --
(laughter.) We're trying to bring her along -- she's doing good, that
was a good line; it was a good line.
But what we'll do, if you've got a question, I'm going to ask just
grab the attention of a proctor and I'll call on you and we'll get a
chance to do some questions. Yes.
Q Vice President Cheney and Mrs. Cheney, welcome to Duluth,
God's country -- a fact, not an opinion. (Laughter.) Mrs. Cheney,
what is the status of the women in Afghanistan now?
MRS. CHENEY: Well, as Dick mentioned, and it's just so thrilling
to hear those numbers, that 40 percent of the 10 million people
registered are women. And, you know, they've done this with great
bravery. There was one incident where women were pulled off a bus and
killed because they were trying to register to vote.
But the status of women in Afghanistan, what the United States and
our allies have done has really transformed their lives. Little girls
are going to school now. I mean, for years they weren't. Women under
the Taliban were stopped on the street, they were whipped if their
ankles were showing; there were accounts of their fingers being
amputated if they were wearing nail polish. I mean, it is impossible
to imagine the brutality and repression of life under the Taliban. And
to see women re-entering their professions -- doctors, teachers,
engineers -- to see those little girls going to school, I have to tell
you, just makes my heart glad. We've done a very good thing there.
(Applause.)
Q Mr. Vice President, the national news media is always
concentrating on the less than productive relationships that we have
with certain Arab and Muslim nations around the world. Would you
comment on the positive relationship that we have with Arab and Muslim
nations and just exactly what they're doing to help us fight the war on
terror?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Sure. I guess the way I would describe it is
our relationships have improved significantly since 9/11. When you
look at the reality of what's happening in various places out there,
that part of it was the exercise of firm leadership and the
demonstration of the President's determination and the ability of the
American military to do what we said we were going to do. And then let
me give you a couple of examples.
If you think about Libya, for example. We went into Afghanistan
and then we went into Iraq, took down those regimes. Moammar Ghadafi
had for years invested millions in trying to acquire nuclear weapons
capability. He had acquired the centrifuges to enrich uranium. He had
the uranium feed stock. And he had a design for a weapon that he had
acquired from a black market network that was providing these materials
not only to him, but also to North Korea and Iran.
The day that we launched into Iraq, he contacted President Bush and
Prime Minister Blair -- he didn't contact Kofi Annan and the United
Nations -- and he basically said he wanted to enter into negotiations
about ending his program. Then some nine months later -- we went into
the negotiations, some nine months later, five days after Saddam was
dug out of his hole in Northern Iraq, Colonel Ghadafi went public and
said he was going to give up all of his WMD materials. He has. We've
rounded all that up. And all that nuclear material that was being
developed for weapons now resides under lock and key down at Oak Ridge,
in Tennessee.
A classic example of how the behavior of a government in the region
saw what the United States did, saw we meant business and fundamentally
altered the course of action. And relationships are improving now
between the U.S. and Libya.
Other examples. Pakistan, President Musharraf has been one of our
key allies in this effort. We have captured and killed hundreds of al
Qaeda -- a lot of them in Pakistan. We captured, in Pakistan, Khalid
Shaykh Muhammad, the man who was the mastermind of the 9/11 attack.
He's now in custody because of the help and cooperation we got from
President Musharraf. Musharraf is -- now recognizes that he's on the
target list for al Qaeda, too, there have been two or three
assassination attempts on him in the last year.
Saudi Arabia, after they got hit in Riyadh, back in May of '03,
they've been allies in the past, but they work very closely with us
now, a coordinated effort because they, too, are targets for the al
Qaeda organization.
So we have made progress. We've got a closer working relationship
with many intelligence services and law enforcement agencies in that
part of the globe. And many of the nations out there have provided
basing, access and so forth for the United States, for our operation.
So I would say overall the degree of cooperation we're getting from
governments out there has, for the most part, improved over the course
of the last three-plus years now, since 9/11.
Q Vice President and Mrs. Cheney, thank you for your service
and welcome to Duluth. Being a military father -- I have two sons in
the military -- I'd like to hear your comment about how we sustain
perhaps four or five -- who knows how many years -- of the kind of pace
that we're keeping currently with active duty military, without
jeopardizing troop strength. And I'd also like to hear Mrs. Cheney
comment -- for the benefit of my wife and the other moms -- what will
this administration do to assure that we continue to support the troops
that are going to be there for, undoubtedly, some period of time?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I -- without question, the level of
activity has been pretty intense in the last three years, since 9/11.
I've spent a fair amount of time with the troops; I've been out into
the region and visited with various unites that are there; I've talked
with folks back, who've been deployed; I've recently been at Camp
Pendleton with Marines; a couple of weeks ago down at Fort Benning,
Georgia, with the 3rd Battalion of the Ranger Regiment, the 75th Ranger
Regiment, who've been deployed repeatedly over the course of that three
year period of time; I meet with National Guard units, I got off the
airplane yesterday in -- I guess it was in Minneapolis -- and visited
the commanders of the Air Guard wing down there, they've been deployed
regularly, too.
So the pace, the ops tempo has been higher than normal, without
question. That places an extra burden on us, in terms of making sure
that they've got all the support they need, that we take care of their
families back here at home, that we provide as much information as
quickly as possible about the kinds of demands that are placed on
various units -- especially those that are Reserve and Guard units that
are called up -- so
that they can plan their own lives and we can work around that.
There's also a major effort underway, especially, for example, in
the Army, to restructure the entire Army, to create a lot more
deployable force out of the total end strength that we have today.
Pete Schoomaker, who is the Army Chief of Staff, has got a superb plan
he's working on to take the same end strength and increase, I think
it's from 33 brigades up to 48 brigades, to be deployable.
We're also in the midst of a major transformation of our forces
worldwide. For example, we've had two heavy divisions deployed in
Europe now, since the end of the Cold War. Now we'll be bringing them
one and there will be only one brigade left in Europe to replace them.
But that means we'll have more of our troops based here at home on a
permanent basis; they'll deploy periodically overseas; it'll be a
lighter, more mobile force; we'll be able to have more basing
arrangements at various places around the world that we have to get
into quickly, but it will be a different kind of force structure than
we've had previously. We're doing the same thing in Korea, where we're
cutting back a brigade there, as well, too.
So I think when you get through this whole period of time you'll
see that on the one hand we're doing everything we can to support the
troops that are deployed out there now; secondly, to restructure the
entire force so we can better sustain these kinds of operations,
recognizing that what we have to do in the global war on terror and the
way we have to operate is fundamentally different than what we did
during the Cold War, when the basic idea was to keep a lot of heavy
divisions forward deployed overseas to be able to take on the Soviets,
for example, in a conventional armored warfare, the kind of thing that
you'd have if there had ever been a major conflict in Europe.
So all of that should help relieve the turmoil, if you will, and
the turnover in the force. The Secretary -- also talking about longer
assignments, instead of rotating somebody in and out of a unit every
two years, that once you signed on for a unit, you'd stay for a longer
period of time. That means fewer moves for the family, more
consistency and stability over time.
We're very sensitive to the need to maintain the quality of life
for the force, because it's an all-volunteer force, everybody who is
wearing the uniform today voluntarily put it on. That places a special
obligation on all of us to make certain that we manage that process in
the best way possible, to take into account their needs, too. A lot of
the soldiers today are married, they've got families, they need good
schools for their kids, decent health care, housing, and so forth, and
we have to tend to all of that at the same time.
I'm confident we can do it. I served as Secretary of Defense for
four years, myself. I can't say enough things about the caliber of
people we have serving today and about the value of the all-volunteer
force, they do a superb job for us. And we're watching very carefully
all those indicators to make certain that we do, in fact, do whatever
is necessary to maintain that force as strong and as healthy and as
vibrant as it is today.
MRS. CHENEY: I'll just add one thing, which is, you know, what
Dick and I are doing traveling all across the country is sometimes you
wake up in the morning and you feel like, oh, my gosh, this a is pretty
exhausting thing we're doing. There is nothing that energizes either
of us -- and I think it's probably -- I'm speaking for Dick, but I've
done that before. Meeting with the young men and women who are
serving, and meeting with military families, there is such strength
there, such focus, such conviction, and it does seem to me that one of
the things that we can do to repay that is to elect a
Commander-in-Chief who has that same focus and strength and conviction,
and who understands that the way you honor the men and women who are
serving is by completing this mission. (Applause.)
Q Vice President Cheney and Mrs. Cheney, I have been hearing
the opposition saying things like, if you're re-elected that we're
going to be -- you're going to institute the draft. And I know it
isn't true, but I want you to let other people know it, too.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: All right. This is an urban legend.
(Laughter.) Or a nasty political rumor, I'm not sure which. Nobody
has any intention -- nobody in a position of responsibility -- any
intention of trying to reinstitute the draft. It makes no sense at
all. As I say, and those of us who have been associated with the
military in the past -- and as I say, I had the privilege of serving as
Secretary of Defense for four years, from '89 to '93, through Desert
Storm and Just Cause in Panama and so forth. The thing you come away
from that with is just enormous respect for the caliber of people we
have serving today.
The other thing that I would say, in addition to the fact that
everybody is there because they want to be there, just affects their
quality and caliber of the whole operation. But, also, it has forced
the services to be much better than they used to be about how they tend
to their people. You know, when you had an arrangement where manpower
was basically a free good -- you didn't have to pay for it, you could
compel people to serve, you got your monthly quota and put them through
basic and trained them up and away we went -- it worked under certain
circumstances and during World War II made sense.
But once we went to the all volunteer force after Vietnam, it
forced the services to think about: Well, how do I attract good
people? How do I retain them? What do I have to pay them? What kind
of benefits do we provide? What kind of leadership? Do we give them
enough responsibility so that they're willing to sign on and be proud
of their service? Do we take care of their families? Is there
adequate base housing? All of those things you have to do if you're
running a business to be able to attract good people that want to work
for you and to have a really first-class organization, the military has
to do now. And it's changed -- I can't measure all the ways in which
it's changed, the way the Army and the Navy and the Air Force and so
forth, think about the kind of organization they want to be and how
they attract their folks.
And it has just -- it's paid enormous dividends. As I say, in all
the years that I've been involved, one way or another -- as a member of
Congress, SECDEF, the Vice President now -- I have yet to encounter
anybody in the uniformed military or in a position of responsibility
who thinks we ought to go back to the old days, where we operated based
on a draft, instead of an all-volunteer force. It works. It works
extraordinary well. It's the best military I think the world has ever
seen. And I don't know anybody in their right mind who would want to
go back and do that. And the notion that somebody is peddling out
there, that there's a secret plan to reinstate the draft -- hogwash,
not true. (Applause.)
MODERATOR: Excuse me, Mr. Vice President, we're out of time.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, we do -- we've got time for a couple
more questions here -- unless you guys all got to go back to work.
(Laughter.) Yes, sir.
Q I just wanted to say to you that slightly chubby, balding
hairline just like yours --
THE VICE PRESIDENT: I don't know anybody like that. (Laughter.)
Q (Inaudible.)
THE VICE PRESIDENT: All right.
Q I stand squarely behind you, 100 percent. It seems that
perception right now in the political process is more important than
reality. The reality that we have right now as a border state, it
appears to me that with millions upon millions of illegal aliens in the
United States, will it take another 9/11 before the Congress, which
really has the power, if you will, will do something about our
borders?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, it's -- it is a continuing problem.
It's one that Tom Ridge, who is the Secretary now of Homeland Security,
spends a lot of time on. We've beefed-up our border patrol
capabilities, completely reorganized that part of the government so
you've got Customs and Border Patrol, and so forth, now all under one
agency. We've hired a lot more people. We've deployed more technology
to be able to monitor the borders.
But you've still got a situation both at the border with Canada and
the border with Mexico are huge, thousands and thousands of miles; a
tradition of good, friendly relations with our neighbors, so these are
not hostile borders, by any means, with armed guards on them -- we
probably haven't got enough people to put armed guards, you know, every
step of the way. So we've got to find ways to work with them to help
try to control the flow of people and to regularlize it and have
knowledge over who's here, when they come, what they're doing when
they're here, and when they leave. It's a problem, too, also, from our
ports and air transportation coming in and so forth, but a special
problem at the borders.
We're doing better. We're not doing good enough, yet. And it's an
area that the President continues to emphasize. He's got good, strong
understanding of because of his years as the governor of Texas, and
trying to deal with the problem down there, which has been
significant. And we just have to keep working at it. But we do need
to find ways to make certain we know who's here and what they're doing,
and to protect it.
Q We're behind you in that.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: All right. Thank you. (Applause.)
Q I have just a little different opinion on men with hair.
(Laughter.) Just teasing you.
My name is Peter Wood, I'm a third generation logger from the
Duluth area here, and my family has homesteaded where I live for the
last, almost hundred years.
The forest industry is about the second industry in Minnesota. We
employ roughly around 60,000 people. What is your own take on the
President's healthy initiative on forests?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, we think the Healthy Forest Initiative
is very important, especially out our way -- I mean, we're from
Wyoming. The problem we've had out there, with respect to wildfires,
is that it's been devastating. We've had about a five year drought and
we've lost vast stretches of forest. And the policies the President
has put in place to allow us to control that, to go in and harvest some
of that timber and put it to good use -- and partly as a preventive
measure, to make it more easy for us to control and prevent fires in
the far West is extraordinarily important. We've had to continue to
fight to get it through. We've got environmental groups oftentimes on
our case trying to block it, or stop it in various places. But I think
it's absolutely the right thing to do. And as I say, my years in
Wyoming, I used to serve on the public lands subcommittee and the
interior committee for 10 years in the House where we wrestled with
these kinds of issues. And I think the Healthy Forest Initiative is a
very good, a very positive step forward. (Applause.)
Q (Inaudible.)
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, those are tough management decisions
that you've got to make, and obviously, in part the federal government
gets involved because a lot of those are federal resources. Again, in
Wyoming, we've got a slightly different situation because we're a
public land state. We came into the union under different
circumstances. Half the surface of Wyoming is owned by the federal
government. So we get into situations there where we get a real crunch
between the federal interest, the fact that to do anything in Wyoming,
whether it's resource development or farming and ranching, or
recreation, you've got to have access to the public lands. And that
immediately sets up a conflict between the various groups involved. So
we're continually trying to manage that process. I'm not familiar with
the details of the issues you've got around the Boundary Waters Area.
I know it's a beautiful area, very important resource. Right now, the
battle in Wyoming is over snowmobiles in Yellowstone. And those of us
who live in Wyoming -- I've got to be careful how I say this now --
(laughter) -- when you're from a public land state, or a state like
Wyoming, we love it. It's a fantastic place to live. And it is in
great shape relative to, say, New York or San Francisco, in terms of
the natural beauty of the place, but we get a lot of advice from New
York and San Francisco about how to do our business. (Laughter and
applause.) And for years, we've used snowmobiles in Yellowstone. And
I'm sure you got snowmobilers here in northern Minnesota. And it's
something we've done. We do it responsibly in the park. When you go
in the park, you stay on the road. You don't go off-road at all. But
there's been a battle raging now for several years, and the Clinton
administration tried basically to shut down all snowmobiles in
Yellowstone National Park. That doesn't make any sense at all.
Reasonable regulations and requirements and so forth, be sensitive to
other uses -- so there is this battle, that the only way I know about
it is to go into the normal process, the political process, participate
and get actively involved, work with your members of Congress, work
with the administration.
One of the things we inherited when we came in, in the closing days
of the Clinton administration, shortly before he left office, Bill
Clinton designated huge areas in the West as roadless, permanently
roadless, off-limits. You couldn't do anything with them. Well, we've
been through that process now. The courts basically threw that
decision out. We've now gone to a situation where what we've said is
we want to work with the governors, and the governor of each state can
come in with recommendations for how the lands ought to be managed in
that state, and we'll try to work with them to put together an
intelligence, coherent plan that respects and reflects the views of the
people that live there, and who've got to make a living as to how we
ought to proceed. So as I say, these are age-old issues for those of
us who live in places like Minnesota and Wyoming. I think we're doing
a better job now than was true in the past, with respect to managing
that. And you're always looking to balance out, if you will, the
public interest in protecting and preserving a lot of those areas, as
well as the need for folks that live in the area to be able to make a
decent living and to use those resources, but use them intelligently
and in a wise fashion.
So thank you. You bet. One last question.
Q Mr. Vice President, I think I'm going to have to throw one on
the social side. A lot of people, especially the elderly that I've
been around, they get really mad because Mr. Bush is going to --
President Bush is going to take away their Social Security. That's one
of the issues. The other one --
THE VICE PRESIDENT: It's not an issue. It's not going to happen.
(Laughter.)
Q Believe me it is when you're downtown waiting for a bus and
they've read about it -- that he's taking away my Social Security. And
the Medicare, and Medicaid -- these are things that I hear a lot about
in the different groups I belong to, and the education -- like my
daughter moving from one school to the other because they brought in --
everybody has to be educated, so we'll take them from a bad school and
put them in a good school. And the good school turns bad because of
the students. There's no doubt about it. These are social factors the
average mom and dad coming home, and maybe they've got two hours before
everybody has to get to bed, and at least my grandson knows the
President is Mr. Bush. And the thing of it is, this is the argument
-- what is the President going to do for me?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, let me give you a quick response to a
couple of those. Social Security -- the Social Security program is
safe. We have no intention on taking away anybody's Social Security
benefits. Don't let anybody tell you otherwise. For those who are
currently in the program, receiving benefits, the program is secure.
For those who are about to retire, getting close to retirement age,
they're going to be fine.
The problem we're going to have in Social Security is down the road
30 years or so, and today's younger worker in their 20s and 30s can
look at it and legitimately say, well, is there going to be anything
there when I'm ready to retire? And there are going to be long-term
problems with the program if we don't find ways to keep it solvent and
make it solvent. One of the things the President has talked about, I
think and this applies to the younger generation. It would not apply
to anybody who is already receiving benefits, or expecting soon to
receive benefits, but it would a program that would allow the younger
worker voluntarily -- they don't have to, but that they could take part
of their payroll tax and invest it in a personal retirement account,
earn a higher rate of return and be able to have greater confidence
when they reached retirement age that they would, in fact, have the
cushion they need for their retirement when that time comes. It's a
concept. It's an idea. There are a lot of ideas floating around about
exactly how you would do it. But those are some of the things we're
looking at. But anybody -- tell anybody, any of your friends today,
their Social Security check is going to continue to arrive just like
clockwork. And I don't know anybody who isn't committed to that course
of action.
With respect to Medicare, the President did something I think is
very important -- it's the most important change in Medicare in my
lifetime since the program was set up back in the '60s. This year,
when we passed legislation -- this past year, he signed it last
December, I guess, when we passed legislation to provide prescription
drug benefits to Medicare recipients -- 40 million Americans. And the
Medicare program, of course, when it was set up -- part B of the
program would provide hospitalization coverage, but in effect, the way
it was working was you could get -- if you were enrolled in Medicare,
you could get covered for a heart bypass operation, but you couldn't
get covered for the prescription drug that might keep you from needing
a bypass operation because it didn't cover prescription drugs. And in
the 40 years, or 50 years since -- 40 years, I guess, since Medicare
was set up, medicine had changed a great deal, and a whole lot more is
available now, possible now through prescription drugs. They're a much
more important part of our continuing care for everybody, and so the
President wanted to change that.
His opposition -- the Democrats, frankly, campaigned year after
year after year on the basis that they were going to do this, and they
never did. George Bush got elected, and we did it. We got it done.
It's now the law of the land. (Applause.)
So there -- we have I think moved in the right direction with
respect to Medicare. I think that's a major plus. A lot more work to
do in the whole health care area. It's one of the single most
important issues that we face. It affects everybody. It affects
businesses, the cost of doing business, the care and quality of life of
everybody. We've got a lot of folks out there that are not insured
still at this point -- a lot of them working for small businesses. So
the President has got a plan to address a lot of these issues. We've
already started and it will be priority for us clearly in a second
term.
Let me stop at that point. I've gone on long enough, and I've gone
over my limit according to Joanne. So I'll simply want to thank you
again for being here today. As I say, it's a enormous privilege for
all of us to be able to participate in the presidential selection
process. Lynne and I feel uniquely blessed to get to campaign all
across this country and meet so many tremendous people in fantastic
communities, and great companies, and organizations doing great work.
And you really do come away from this experience just with this
enormous enthusiasm and excitement and emotional feeling about the
greatness of America. So we're proud to be here today. We hope all of
you will take advantage of our citizenship, participate on November
2nd. And we hope you remember us.
Thank you very much. (Applause.)
END 11:53 A.M. CDT
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