For Immediate Release
Office of the Vice President
October 12, 2004
Vice President and Mrs. Cheney's Remarks and Q&A; at a Town Hall Meeting in Milwaukee, Wisconsin
American Serb Hall
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
11:40 A.M. CDT
MRS. CHENEY: Thank you. We've got to get ourselves rearranged
here. This is not the first time we've done it, though it might look
like it, when we come out here and try to figure out who is going to
sit where.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Sit down, please.
MRS. CHENEY: Yes. (Laughter.) Well, I do get to introduce Dick.
I get this assignment because I've known him for so long. I have known
him since he was 14 years old. I know, it is worth thinking about.
(Laughter.)
THE VICE PRESIDENT: But not too hard. (Laughter.)
MRS. CHENEY: And his job that summer, when I first knew him, was
sweeping out the Ben Franklin store in our hometown in Casper,
Wyoming. And I've 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 home in Casper. And I've known him since he was
loading bentonite, 100 pound bags of bentonite onto 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 have known him, and Jim
mentioned this, since his job was to follow Warren Knowles around to
various county fairs in Wisconsin and hand out "We Like it Here"
buttons. Do you remember "We Like it Here" buttons? I've got a lot of
them. (Laughter.)
Well, and of course it has just been such a special honor these
last four years to be beside Dick as he's been Vice President of the
United States and working with our wonderful President, George W.
Bush. (Applause.) I feel I'm so privileged. I've had a front row
seat on history. And I have felt so enormously proud as I watched our
great nation rise up after those awful attacks of September 11th, our
great nation rise up and comfort people whose lives were changed
forever by that event, and then watch our President's leadership as he
went after the terrorists who had attacked us, and as he changed our
security policy, changed the policy of this country so that we would
also go after states that sponsored terror -- very strong, very
steadfast. This has been an historic time, one that will be in the
history books.
George Bush has been such a steadfast leader. And like a lot of
you here, I'm a mom, and I -- well, maybe not like a lot of you, I'm a
grandma, too. And I remember 9/11. I remember that day, and not
knowing where my kids were, not knowing where my grandchildren were,
and that feeling you have in the pit of your stomach, until you're sure
everybody is safe and you're sure everybody is okay. And there are a
lot of issues that are important in this election, a lot that are
important to me.
But I've got to tell you what is foremost in my mind is knowing
that the terrorists are going to try again, and thinking about who is
it, who do I want to have standing in the door? And I'll tell you, it
is not John Kerry and it is not John Edwards. (Applause.) It is
George W. Bush and it is my husband, Dick Cheney, Vice President of the
United States. (Applause.)
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Is that my cue? (Laughter.)
MRS. CHENEY: That's your cue, that's you.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, thank you very much, all of you for
being here this morning. Let me thank my good friend, Jim
Sensenbrenner for his kind remarks. Jim and I -- he didn't tell you --
we also went to Congress together. We were classmates. And he ended
up Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and look what I got?
(Laughter.) But we served together for many, many years. And he's
been a great friend. He does a superb job for all of you here in
Wisconsin, and really, for everybody in the country. (Applause.)
I'm delighted to be back at the Serb Memorial Hall. We had a great
fish fry here four years ago. And of course, we didn't carry Wisconsin
that time, but we did win the election, and this time we're going to
carry Wisconsin, too. (Applause.)
So we're delighted to have the opportunity to spend some time with
all of you today. What we ordinarily do at these events is I make a
few remarks, and then we'll open it up to questions, and I'll have an
opportunity to respond to some of your comments and concerns as well,
too. We have spent a lot of time in Wisconsin this year because it's
an extraordinarily important state, and it's always fun to come back,
because we spent an important part of our lives here, many years ago.
This is where our oldest daughter was born, and she now has four
children of her own, as a matter of fact.
Of course Lynne said she's known me since we were 14. She wouldn't
go out with me until I was 17 though. (Laughter.) I like to point
that out. And I explain to people that we actually got married because
Dwight Eisenhower got elected President of the United States.
(Laughter.) The fact was -- it's a bit of a stretch, but you'll
understand here in a minute. (Laughter.)
In 1952, when he ran, 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 Lynne. We grew up
together, went to high school together, and just recently we celebrated
our 40th wedding anniversary. (Applause.) I explained to a group the
other night that it hadn't been for Eisenhower's election victory Lynne
would have married somebody else. And she said, right, and now he'd be
Vice President of the United States. (Laughter.) It's true, it's
absolutely true.
But what I would like to do this morning is spend a little bit of
time -- I want to talk about what I think is front and center in this
election, and that's the question of, obviously, of picking the
Commander-in-Chief for the next four years. And I think if you look
back at our history, you'll find there have been times when we've come
upon what I would describe as a turning point in history or a watershed
event or series of events, where we've had to develop new strategy, a
new way to deal with new threats, and figure out how we were going to
defend the country and guarantee our freedom and our security and
safety in the future.
And we had one of those times right after World War II, after we'd
won a tremendous victory in Europe and the Pacific. And then, all of a
sudden, we found we were faced with the problems of the Cold War. The
Soviet Union had gotten very aggressive and developed nuclear weapons,
had occupied half of Europe. And we had to develop a brand-new
approach, a new strategy, basically develop a strategy of deterrence to
deter the Soviets from ever launching an attack against the United
States, by holding them at risk.
We created new institutions; created the Department of Defense, the
Central Intelligence Agency, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a
whole series of steps we took in the late '40s to put in place a
national security strategy that then put us in good stead for the next
40 years under Republican and Democratic administration alike, until
finally we prevailed in the Cold War in 1990 and '91, when the old
Soviet Union went out of business.
I think we're at another one of those turning points in our
history, and it dates specifically to 9/11 and the events since 9/11,
and that we're now at one of those points where we've had to make some
decisions about national security strategy, about what the basic threat
is facing the country, about how we best organize ourselves and conduct
ourselves going forward, once again, to protect against that new threat
and to guarantee that the United States will be safe and secure in the
future.
And 9/11 represented a dramatic departure from the past for all of
us. I think everybody looks back on that day and remembers where they
were. We lost 3,000 people, approximately, in New York and Washington
and Shanksville, Pennsylvania -- more people than we lost in Pearl
Harbor, the most serious attack ever on U.S. territory. And it forced
us to adjust and to adapt to a whole new threat, because the most
serious threat we face today, now, is the possibility of terrorists
ending up in the middle of one of our cities with a deadlier weapon
than we've ever seen before -- a chemical or a biological agent, or
even a nuclear weapon. That's the ultimate threat we're faced with
today.
And of course, should they be able to do that, they would be able
to threaten the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans, not just
the 3,000 we lost on 9/11. It's a very sobering thought, but it's
essential for us to get our minds around that concept, the nature of
that threat, if we're in fact, then, going to adopt measures adequate
to the task of defeating them, and making certain that we do everything
possible to ensure that we stop that kind of an attack before it can
ever be launched against the United States.
That's the prospect the President was faced with on 9/11 and in the
immediate aftermath of that. And we did embark, then, upon a fairly
dramatic, new step -- strategy, if you will, to deal with that threat.
First and foremost, of course, you do everything you can to defend here
at home -- create the Department of Homeland Security, you pass the
Patriot Act which gives the law enforcement tools they need. The same
tools we use to go after organized crime and after drug traffickers, we
now apply those same tools to terrorists. Project BioShield that was
passed just this past year, that gives the federal government the
authority and the resources to be able to do a better job of developing
technologies and countermeasures to be used against a possible
biological weapons attack against the United States.
But having said all of that, and as we continue to work
aggressively to make America a tougher target, to do a better job of
being able to defend the United States against a possible attack, we
also concluded that there is no such thing as a perfect defense,
because you can be successful 99 percent of the time on defense, but
given the nature of the threat, terrorists armed with a WMD, the
possibility that they might get through, even if it's only 1 percent or
one-tenth of one percent, the consequences of that are so enormous that
you have to go beyond simply a good defense. And those Green Bay
Packer fans know a good defense isn't enough, you've also got to go on
offense.
And that's exactly what we've done. The President made that basic,
fundamental decision early on, that we would use the full might of the
United States to go after the terrorists, wherever they plan and train
and organize, and also to after and hold to account those who sponsor
terror and support terror. And that was a new departure, because it
had not been done previously -- not to the extent that we've done it
since.
Of course, our first efforts we mounted were in Afghanistan, where
we went in and took down the Taliban and closed the training camps
where some 20,000 terrorists had been trained, by one estimate, in the
late '90s, between 1997 and about 2001, including some of those who
struck us on 9/11. We captured or killed hundreds of al Qaeda. We put
the rest of the organization on the run. And of course we've been
working since to complete the final task, if you will, which is to
stand up a representative, democratically-elected government to govern
Afghanistan in the aftermath of having removed the Taliban and ended
Afghanistan's status as a safe harbor or a sanctuary for terrorists.
It's absolutely essential we do that last step. We don't want to
go into Afghanistan, take down the old regime, and then turn around and
walk away, because it will simply, once again, become a breeding ground
for terror as it did in the late '90s.
So what we've embarked upon in Afghanistan is to get that democracy
up and running. And the Afghans registered 10 million new voters,
nearly half of them women, and on Saturday, just three days ago, held
the first election in the 5,000-year history of Afghanistan.
(Applause.)
Now, it didn't get as much coverage as I think, frankly, it
merited. I think this is a historic, historic event. And millions of
Afghans flocked to the polls, stood in line for hours and hours to be
able to cast that first vote for a President of Afghanistan. It's
going to take them weeks to count all the votes because some of ballot
boxes have to be brought down by donkey and mule from the mountains.
It's very rough, rugged country. But they're getting the job done.
And the international observers who were there to watch all of this
have concluded that it was, indeed, a free and a fair election -- but a
remarkable event.
Now, you can find a lot of people out there who will say, well, you
could never pull that off, that will never happen. Afghanistan has
been wracked by civil war. It was occupied by the Soviets. The
Taliban had taken over and been a very heavy hand for a very long
period of time, that the Afghans aren't capable of self-government.
But I think everybody who said is dead wrong. And they're off to a
good start. We've still got a lot of work to do to help them, and the
key is to get them stood up and governing themselves, as well as able
to provide for their own security. We're working on that by training
and equipping the Afghan security forces. But that's the same basic
fundamental approach that we're taking, as well, in Iraq.
Iraq, different situation -- we went into Iraq because Saddam
Hussein had a long track record of having produced and used weapons of
mass destruction in the past, because he had started two wars, because
he had, in fact, been a safe haven and a sponsor of terror. He had
been carried on the State Department terror sponsor list for at least
15 years. He was paying $25,000 to the families of suicide bombers.
He had provided a home for Abu Nidal, a terrorist organization.
Palestinian Islamic Jihad had operated out of there, and he had a
relationship with al Qaeda -- go look at testimony by George Tenet,
Director of the CIA, two years ago in open public session before the
council on foreign relations in the Senate, where he made out the
specifics of the 10-year relationship between al Qaeda and Iraq.
Now, once we've gone into Iraq, we've gotten the job done.
Obviously, Saddam Hussein is in jail, and the world is much better off
for it. (Applause.) And now we're embarked upon the hard work there
of standing up a democracy. We've got an Iraq interim government in
place. It has been there a little over 90 days. Contrary to what
you'll hear from our opponents and some others, talking heads on the
tube and so forth, it's a little premature, I think, at this point to
judge the Iraqi effort a failure. They're up and running. They've got
a lot of work to do yet, but they'll have elections in January -- a
significant development. And hopefully by the end of next year, there
will be a democratically elected government with their new constitution
in place in Iraq, just as there will be the end of this year in
Afghanistan.
Again, as I say, it's absolutely essential we proceed down that
course and execute the strategy as we've laid it out. Now, what we're
hearing from some on the other side is a concerned voice that this is
never going to work. Nothing works; everything is fouled up. We've
heard this from John Edwards and John Kerry. John Edwards,
two-and-a-half years, six months after we went into Afghanistan, made a
big deal out of Afghanistan has turned to chaos, the Taliban are taking
over again, et cetera. He was dead wrong. If we'd listened to him and
to that view of the world, obviously, we wouldn't have made the
progress we've made today.
Now, part of the challenge going forward and the decision we're
going to make on November 2nd is specifically, are we going to continue
to pursue and aggressively use the power of the United States to go
after not only terrorists, but also those who sponsor and support
terror. Now, when we are tough and aggressive, as we were in Iraq and
Afghanistan, there are side benefits. Moammar Ghadafi five days after
we captured Saddam Hussein went public and announced he was giving up
his aspirations to acquire weapons of mass destruction. (Applause.)
When he got ready to surrender his uranium, the centrifuges to enrich
uranium, and the design for nuclear weapons, he didn't call the United
Nations. He called Tony Blair and George Bush. And all of that is now
here in the United States. (Applause.)
But the key for us in the future is: are we prepared to continue to
pursue a strategy that I think clearly is working that requires the
United States to be tough and aggressive? Or are we going to revert
back to what I call the pre-9/11 mind set. And I think that's a choice
we're going to make on November 2nd because I firmly believe that John
Kerry is trapped back in that pre-9/11 mind set. And I see it based on
his history, of his record in the United States Senate. I see it based
on his comments during the course of this campaign. And let me talk
about that for a few minutes, because I think it's very important.
We saw -- if you -- I know there's nobody here who reads The New
York Times, but if you did, on Sunday there was a piece in the Sunday
magazine talks about John Kerry's view of the world and these set of
issues. And in there, he's quoted as talking about winning back -- or
getting back to the time when the whole question of terror didn't
represent as big an issue as it does today. What was the word he used
for it, Lynne? Nuisance was the way he described it -- that we could
somehow manage and control it back to where it was just nuisance level,
and then he drew this comparison with law enforcement dealing with
problems of illegal gambling or prostitution, for example. Now, think
about that for minute. When was it that terrorism was just a
nuisance? When I look back at our history and ask the question, well,
let's see, was that in the spring of 1983 when terrorists took out our
embassy in Beirut and killed several of our people, including our CIA
station chief? Or was it maybe in the fall of 1983 when a suicide
truck bomber drove into the ground floor of the building where we had
our Marines in a barracks in Beirut, and we lost 241 killed that
morning? Was that just a nuisance attack? Or maybe 1993, the first
attack on World Trade Center in New York, when they first tried to take
down the tower. They failed that day, but they drove a truck load of
explosives underneath in the hopes, I think, that they could probably
topple the tower. They killed half a dozen Americans, wounded dozens
more. The attacks on our embassies in East Africa, simultaneously in
1998, where they killed hundreds including several Americans? Or maybe
it was the attack on the USS Cole was just sort of nuisance level,
where you hit a U.S. destroyer and we lost 19 sailors that morning, and
nearly lost the ship? I can't think of a time when it made any sense
at all to think of terms of these kinds of attacks upon Americans in
the nuisance category, or to -- the equivalent of what he talked the
other day when he talked about the illegal gambling and prostitution,
just a comparison that strikes me as totally foreign. He says that
there's some level of terrorism that we can quote, "accept or live
with."
What we've learned over the years is, if you look back at recent
history that in fact, the terrorists learned a couple of lessons
because 9/11; one, that they could strike us with impunity, because
they had repeatedly. And they rarely paid a price for it. We'd go out
and aggressively pursue individual terrorists. We got Ramzi Yousef,
for example, who did the first World Trade Center attack in 1993. He's
doing a life sentence up in Colorado, the federal pen. We never
reached behind the individuals and really went after the organizations
that were behind some of these attacks. We did fire off a few cruise
missiles at some training camps in Afghanistan in '98 after they hit
our embassies. But there was never a very effective attack back on
those who launched those strikes against the United States. It didn't
happen. They basically felt they could strike us with impunity because
they had.
The other lesson they'd learned was that if they hit us hard
enough, they could change our policy because they had on more than one
occasion. After we got hit in Beirut in '83, within a matter of
months, we'd withdrawn our forces from Lebanon. And then in 1993, you
may remember -- if you saw the movie "Black Hawk Down" it portrays the
events where lost 19 soldiers in the battle in Mogadishu, and within
weeks, we'd pulled all of our forces out of Somalia. So two lessons,
one, they could strike us with impunity; and, two, if they did hit us
hard enough, they could change U.S. policy.
Now, that's still their ultimate strategy. But what happened, of
course, on 9/11 was they escalated, an ever higher level, killed 3,000
Americans, struck us here at home, and so that the approach that we'd
taken before that, sort of, well, it's just a law enforcement problem,
approach clearly didn't work. It didn't discourage them from doing
anything. In fact, it did just the opposite. They grew bolder. They
decided they would launch ever more deadly attacks. And of course, now
we know that if they could get their hands on deadlier weapons, there's
no reason in the world why they won't use them against us -- no
restraint that operates with respect to the al Qaeda or their fellow --
Now, I look at John Kerry's track record; I hear him talk about
those considerations with respect to terrorism, getting it back to the
point where it's nuisance level, and as I say, I have trouble coming to
grips with what that means. I remember when Pam Am 103 went down in
late 1988 over Scotland, how many Americans did we lose that day? This
is has never been a nuisance. And the danger here is that we will ask
a man to take over as Commander-in-Chief who, in fact, doesn't get it,
who still wants to hark back to that pre-9/11 mind set, who is not
prepared to aggressively pursue the war on terror with the kind of
aggressive strategy that will make certain we take down the terrorists
overseas so we don't have to fight them here at home. (Applause.)
Now, he's got a record that stretches back 20 years in the Senate
and even before that. He first ran for office in the early '70s when
he ran for Congress. He went to the convention in Boston this year,
and he didn't want to talk about that record, so he emphasized his
service in Vietnam. We have always praised his service in Vietnam. I
did in my acceptance speech at the Republican Convention in New York
City. I got up and praised John Kerry's Vietnam service -- we've never
challenged his patriotism -- and the Republican audience applauded.
What I challenge is his judgment. When he ran for Congress the first
time in the '70s, he did so on the basis that we should not commit U.S.
troops unless we have United Nations approval. In 1984, when he ran
for the Senate the first time, he ran on a platform, a lengthy platform
of all the weapons systems he wanted to cut and eliminate that were
part of the Reagan build-up that were vital to our being able to win
the Cold War.
Of course, in 1990 and '91, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and
we had to respond to that in Desert Storm where we had not only 34
nations alongside us -- we've had 30 now in Iraq -- but we had 34 then;
the United Nations Security Council approved it; everything John Kerry
says he wants by way of a quote "global test" before we would use
force, what did he do in 1991? He voted no. He was against Desert
Storm. If he'd had his way, Saddam Hussein would have kept Kuwait.
And now in the period since then, in 1993, after the first attack
on the World Trade Center, he was a member of the Senate intelligence
committee. As best we can tell, he didn't attend any meetings of the
Senate intelligence committee for the year after that attack. But what
he did do was offer an amendment to cut several billion dollars out of
the defense budget -- or the intelligence budget. It was such a
radical proposal even Ted Kennedy wouldn't support it.
Now we fast-forward to the campaign of 2004. Terrorism is a big
issue. The war on terror is a big issue. The American people
understand there's nothing nuisance-like, if you will, about the
problems we're having to deal with today. They understand full well
the cost of our failure to deal effectively with it, though we've got
to continue to be aggressive. We've got to continue to go after the
terrorists. And there's a premium today on a strong figure who
understands that and who will, in fact, be an effective
Commander-in-Chief in terms of the decision we're going to make this
year.
So what we've seen obviously is some tough talk about out of our
opponents on the other side of the aisle. But tough talk in a
90-minute debate cannot obscure a 30-year record of being on the wrong
side of virtually every national security issue that's come along.
(Applause.)
So anyway, that's what I think is at the heart of the choice we're
going to make three weeks from today. It's an absolutely essential
decision. I think it's maybe the most important election of my
lifetime. Some say, well, you're on the ballot. (Laughter.) That's
true. But when I looked at the elections that I've been involved in,
and I've been involved in a number of them now going back many years in
some capacity or other, I have trouble finding another one where I
think the choice is as stark, or the consequence is as great as are the
consequences for the nation and for my kids and grandkids, and for the
future of our nation as the decisions we're going to make three weeks
from today -- very, very important piece of business.
So we appreciate very much your willingness to be here today. I
say, we want to thank everybody. And let me close my remarks, and then
we'll open up to questions by saying how much we owe -- obviously, I
think we owe a lot to the President for the way he has handled an
extraordinarily difficult challenge that nobody anticipated when you
win election. (Applause.)
But I also want to thank our men and women in uniform, and all our
veterans for what they've done for all of us. (Applause.)
Now, we've got some folks around here in these attractive orange
vests with numbers on them. (Laughter.) And they've got microphones.
And if you've got a question or a comment you'd like to offer for the
good of the cause, get their attention and I'll come around and try to
call on somebody. Number three over here.
Q Mr. Vice President, as a fellow conservative and sportsman,
will summarize the efforts made by your administration to protect and
set aside federal lands that some day will be used not by just our
children, but their grandchildren and future generations?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, we've worked on the general question of
resource conservation of lands now for -- well, I guess, the three plus
years we've been there. At present, we're working with all of the
states in the West, where you've got significant public lands that have
been set aside as roadless areas. Those are being reviewed with the
governors of the various states, where the governor is authorized to
come in and specifically recommend additional safeguards, or areas that
can be set aside to be secured for the future -- protective status.
We've been big supporters of the CRP program, this is the program
that we've used for agriculture. I think total funding as I recall is
committed over a 10-year period of time, I believe it's $39 billion.
I'd have to check the number. But basically, the purpose being to
encourage people -- private landowners who've got agriculture land that
they don't want to have in production, that they can set aside and not
produce on, protect it -- develop it for habitat and so forth. And the
CRP program is alive and well. It has been significantly expanded.
And it's a vital piece of conservation going forward.
The President has also made a commitment that differs from the one
in the past. There has been a standard up until now, for example, on
wetlands that we wanted a no net loss of wetlands. This is the basic
policy that guided the federal government in making decisions in that
area. We've changed that. We actually want to go forward and increase
the total amount of wetlands that we've got set aside and protected in
the country. Those of you who are duck hunters understand the enormous
importance and value of that -- hunt ducks myself.
But the Wyoming Wilderness Act, my own situation, back when I was
in Congress, the most important piece of legislation I got through,
added nearly a million acres of wilderness to the designation of
wilderness in Wyoming. So those of us from that part of the country
value very highly those resources, and they're always balancing the
important requirements in terms of what you need by way of other uses,
agriculture, tourism, recreation, and so forth, as well as
preservation. But they go hand-in-hand. And if we do it wisely and
intelligently, there's no reason in the world why we can't protect and
preserve those resources for future generations. As an avid hunter and
fly fisherman, I care a lot about all those items. (Applause.)
Number six, right behind -- you somebody there.
Q Thank you for being here today with us again. As I
understand it 72 percent of the Heinz products are manufactured outside
the United States. Wouldn't that not be a form of outsourcing?
(Applause.)
THE VICE PRESIDENT: I didn't know that -- 72 percent of the Heinz
products are manufactured outside the U.S. and isn't that a form of
outsourcing? It sounds like it to me. (Laughter.)
Yes, over here.
Q Good morning, Mr. Vice President. Thank you very much for
signing my Roberto Clemente jersey -- increasing value, by the way.
(Laughter.) Somebody offered me a lot of money -- recently.
Mr. Vice President, in the next three weeks you drive the point of
security and terrorism. How do you and the President intend to drive
the point and contrast that with Mr. Kerry's position of global test,
that we always have to go to a United Nations to get approval? And you
and I know that the United Nations is the number one terrorist enabler
organization in the world right now. (Applause.)
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, see, I think the notion of a global test
that Senator Kerry mentioned the other night in the debate is flawed.
In effect, what he said was that the President of the United States
somehow is going to impose a qualifier, or perhaps delegate to somebody
else the ultimate authority to decide whether or not to use military
force. That's a constitutional power he has under Article II of the
Constitution as the Commander-in-Chief, that's his responsibility first
and foremost. The President and the Vice President and other of us
take the oath of office to protect and preserve the Constitution of the
United States against all enemies foreign and domestic. That's sort of
your number one obligation. So Senator Kerry hasn't been clear what he
means by global test, but that's all right, he hasn't been clear on a
lot of things, I guess. (Laughter and applause.)
You raise an interesting question on the United Nations. Now, the
U.N. has served a useful purpose over the years in various
capacities. But obviously, there are some problems there. And one of
the things that stands out that has developed recently, that has come
to notice over the course of the last year or so has been the extent to
which the oil-for-food program that was set up specifically to provide
food and medical supplies for the Iraqi people -- it was to allow the
government of Saddam Hussein to sell oil to be able to finance his
urgent needs for his population appears now, based on the Duelfer
report completed just recently, that it has been that the program was
totally corrupted, if you will by Saddam Hussein, that he was, in fact,
using it to generate revenue, and then the allegation is that he was
using the revenue generated that way to pay off other people outside
Iraq, possibly officials of other governments. A lot of this has not
been confirmed yet. It's just laid out in the report, and there's
still a lot of work yet to be done. But what it looks like is that the
sanctions that were place were, in fact, being seriously eroded, that
he was finding a lot of people outside who were prepared to violate
those sanctions to sell him prohibited goods, such as conventional
armaments, and that the program instead of being a part of an overall
successful international package of sanctions that could be imposed on
him to force him to live up to his international obligations was -- had
been converted so that in fact being used to enrich him and to help him
evade sanctions, to get around the prohibitions that were there. It is
-- it's an interesting proposition. I think it badly needs to be
cleaned up.
Paul Volcker, who is running the investigation in behalf of the
United Nations, is a very able and talented individual. I'm sure he'll
do a good job. I think all of us, including -- colleagues in Congress
will wait to see what finally emerges from that, and what steps need to
be taken to make certain that the United Nations cannot be corrupted if
you will, the way that apparently Saddam Hussein corrupted it.
Somebody over here.
Q Mr. Vice President, thank you for being here. We have a
daughter that is a very high risk OB surgeon. She'll be featured this
Thursday on the Oprah show, in fact. Yesterday, she delivered
quintuplets. The husband is badly wounded in Iraq, but they got him
stabilized and he's on his way home. What plans does the Bush
administration have now to protect our daughter and other physicians
like her?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: She's an OB/GYN?
Q Yes.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, this is a problem I've encountered many
places around the country because the fact is that the need for medical
liability reform is out there, because the number of lawsuits that have
been brought, especially targeting an OB/GYN specialty has gotten to
the point where it has driven up malpractice insurance rates so that
we've, in fact, shut down a lot of OB/GYN practices.
I met the other day -- we were in New Mexico with a group of docs
who -- about five or six of them were at a particular session I held --
talked about the extent of the problem. There are some 20 or 21 states
now around the country that are listed as crisis states by the American
Medical Association; where there are no limitations, if you will, on
non-economic damages; where the result has been that one out of 10 or
one of our 11 practitioners in the OB/GYN specialties have now gotten
out of the business. We're not filling all the slots in medical school
that are available to train new docs in that specialty, which is
another sign of the problems that are there, and the insurance rates
are just -- are astronomical.
My home state of Wyoming has been hard hit. We just had a special
session of the legislature to try to deal with it. We can't recruit
new docs coming into the state. The rates have more than doubled in
the course of two or three years. The main insurer in the state has
pulled out now, and what is needed we believe is medical liability
reform. The best case I heard the other day was a woman OB/GYN
practitioner who because of her past experience, and the danger to her
practice has now decided that she has to screen out high risk patients
because there were the ones where you're most likely to have a problem,
and could conceivably lead to a lawsuit -- another lawsuit could, in
fact, put her out of business. She'll no longer be able to afford the
insurance to be able to continue to practice.
But think about what that means -- what that means is that the
people in the community who most need good care, probably because they
didn't have really top notch prenatal care up to the point of delivery,
are the ones most at risk now, and they can no longer get treatment.
Now, they've got to go someplace else. They've got to drive farther,
obviously are more at risk because again of the liability that has been
developed as a result of these lawsuits.
We think the answer is to put a cap on non-economic damages. We've
gotten legislation through the House to do that. It's been blocked in
the Senate. Senator Kerry has voted against medical liability reform,
I believe, altogether now about 10 times. John Edwards certainly as a
personal injury trial lawyer doesn't believe in what we think is
effective liability reform. We also think it would be valuable to
place a limitation on lawyer's fees. That is to say as the settlements
go up, they ought to get a smaller and smaller percentage because right
now today on a national basis close to 50 percent of the award now goes
to administrative overhead and lawyer's fees. It doesn't even go to
the person who has been injured or wronged.
And California has done that. They've capped both non-economic
damages, as well as legal fees. And it has worked in California to the
extent that their rates have not gone up as rapidly there as they have
elsewhere. So we'll continue to push very hard on it. One estimate is
that these costs add perhaps as much as $100 billion a year to the
overall cost of care in this country. And it's a serious problem. We
want to make certain people who have legitimate grievances have access
to the court for redress of grievances. That's important. But it's
also clear that a lot of the efforts that are underway here, frankly,
are counterproductive, or adding dramatically the cost of medical care
in this country, and as I say, driving many good docs out of business.
And we can't have that. (Applause.)
Q Mr. Vice President, and Mrs. Cheney, this is a great honor.
I have kind of a different question for you.
MRS. CHENEY: That's always scary. (Laughter.)
Q No, no, I think you'll like this one. As a security mom for
George Bush, I was wondering, instead of asking you what you're going
to do for me, or us, I would like to ask what I, and people like me can
do for you and President Bush and our country so our kids can be safe,
and our country can remain free? Do we have to make some sacrifices,
work at something, join something? I would love to help you.
(Applause.)
MRS. CHENEY: Well, just let me offer my own personal experience.
We have got to be sure that the men and women that we elect to high
office have this as a priority -- one of the greatest things about our
country, one of the things that makes what happened in Afghanistan and
what's going to happen in Iraq so moving is that we have the power,
each of us as individuals, to go to the polls and to vote, and to be
sure that the people we vote for understand what our priorities are.
And that is so powerful.
I have been working in politics a long time. You don't have to be
doing this at the national level, you do it at the local level, where
you're sure that our first responders are getting the support that they
need. That is so important -- and where they're getting the kind of
moral support, too. It is really a good thing every once in a while to
say thank you, as I know you probably have, for the police and for the
firefighters who keep us safe. And it is a really good thing to be
sure that you do everything you can -- and I -- it is an election, and
I don't mean to make this seem too political, but it is a really good
thing to make sure that people understand the record of the men and
women who run for high office -- not just the President and Vice
President, but all along the line. Where have they been on these
issues of security? Where are they when it comes to keeping our nation
strong, to making sure that the men and women in our military have
sufficient support.
When I think back over the whole course of the arguments about
flip-flopping, the one that makes me really indignant is the fact that
John Kerry and John Edwards would vote to send our troops into battle,
and then vote not to fund the ammunition and the fuel, the body armor
that they needed to be in battle. That's the kind of thing that I
think we all do ourselves a favor if we call it to the attention of our
neighbors, if we call it to the attention of our friends.
And here in Wisconsin, I got to tell you, getting to the polls on
Election Day and being sure that all of your discerning friends get to
the polls on Election Day could not be more important. So let's try
for that. (Applause.)
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Let me add one additional thought. At a time
like this, when we're involved in this kind of conflict, the very
special responsibility for all the military and for their families --
they take on a burden that nobody else does. And they're all
volunteers, they all volunteered to wear the uniform and to serve. I
think, back over here we've got a young mother who -- as I recall, she
already had two children, now she's got five. She had quintuplets.
Her husband is a Marine, wounded in Iraq, now making his way back to
the U.S. So that family probably needs a hand.
And we've got so many people out there who serve -- folks in the
Guard and Reserve who have got their normal, regular lives, they've got
families to support, they've got financial needs, and then, because
they signed up and made a commitment to be available if we needed them,
get called up and get deployed. Their families get left having to do
without them for some considerable period of time. It affects them
economically, it affects them in terms of who's going to get the car
fixed -- all those things that all of us have to -- well, not all of
us. I don't have to right now. I will when I get back to the private
sector -- all that everybody has to do on a daily basis. And I can't
think of a more deserving group to demonstrate support to, and to help
them with whatever they need help with, to provide those family support
services that are so vital when you've got, as I say, young men and
women willing to go in harm's way and put their lives on the line for
the nation. They really deserve all of the assistance and support we
can give them, and we should never forget that. (Applause.)
Right down here, number five.
Q Mr. Vice President and Mrs. Cheney, I've been following your
career, Mr. Vice President, since you were a pup. (Laughter.)
Honestly. And my concern is that I'm concerned about my children and
my grandchildren and my great-grandchildren and one
great-great-granddaughter. So I worry about the hatred and the -- by
the opposition, some on the other side that has turned the whole
country around. It's something that we value here in Wisconsin --
THE VICE PRESIDENT: You mean, in terms of the political war?
Well, there's no question this is a hard-fought campaign this year,
that when you're in the trench you're receiving incoming periodically.
You adjust to all of that. It's appropriate that this should be a
tough campaign, we should be taking on tough issues. I can't think of
a more appropriate setting than a presidential campaign to have the
kind of debates we're having. And obviously, there are certain things
that people say out there occasionally about me that I think maybe go a
bit far, but I don't think we ought to let the -- when I look at it,
sort of the noise in the system obscure the basic fundamental
principles of what's going on there, the enormous privilege we have as
Americans to participate in the political process.
And it has gotten very contentious at times, without question. But
there have been other times in our history when we've had hard fought
campaigns. If you think about contests in the past that took place
amidst a great national emergency -- Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the
middle of World War II -- you'll find ample times when emotions have
been high, when we've had important decisions to make, we managed to
get on with our business and conduct the presidential campaign, make
those national choices. And that's really the hallmark of the
greatness of our nation, that we, in fact, have that opportunity, that
we get out there and lots of times duke it up, you need a pretty thick
skin for this business, without question.
I've got a lot of scars now I didn't have when I was a pup.
(Laughter.) But all of that is outweighed by this enormous sense I
have of what a privilege it is to have the opportunity to participate
in this process, to campaign all across this country. Lynne and I have
been in 48 states now in this election cycle, and to get to go out and
meet so many fantastic people, to have them say thank you, to welcome
the participation by everybody, even those on the other side who are
supporting our opponent, that's the way it ought to be.
And I keep thinking about the privilege that goes with
participating in the process, even though it does sometimes get kind of
nasty out there, involving -- and you really do need pretty thick skin
for it. I think we're all blessed to get to do what we do, and there
have been a lot of times when this business has been pretty rough in
our history. My friend, Al Simpson, I served with for years in
Wyoming, said a politician is a bean bag, or something like that. I'm
not sure what he means, but it is a rewarding, rewarding enterprise.
And you sort of have to sort through some of the noise in the system
and stay focused on what's really important.
MRS. CHENEY: I just want to add that I do think that a
well-developed sense of indignation is not bad once in a while, and
that I encourage it on my grandchildren. It's -- dialogue should be
civil, but when you see something that's going wrong, you should stand
up and say it's going wrong. When there are rumors on the Internet
that there's going to be a draft, you stand up and you say, that is
wrong, that is something that the other side is starting.
But Dick's point is exactly right, that you have to kind of take a
step back, maybe, and indignation is great, but a little humor, a
little distance also helps. I have to tell a story -- this is our
granddaughter, Katie, who is 10. And she was coloring on the floor
with one of her friends. And somebody was on television just whaling
away on Dick. And the friend said to Katie, oh, he is saying some
pretty awful things about your grandpa. And Katie said, oh, don't
worry about it, he's nuts. (Laughter and applause.)
THE VICE PRESIDENT: One here, we got someone. We got a young one
over here.
Q How can we help the Democrats who I believe John Kerry lies
to, to form their own opinions?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: How can we help Democrats to form their own
opinions? (Laughter and applause.)
Well, I have a soft spot in my heart for Democrats because my folks
were Democrats. Before I ran for Congress on the Republican ticket and
needed every vote, I got them to reregister in the primary.
(Laughter.) And Mom kind of liked being a Republican. Once she
switched that was okay, she liked it. Dad always said, well, this is
conditional. Every few years I had to renew it.
I think probably the best advice we can give is advice I heard that
a Boston policeman gave to a group of folks leaving the Democratic
Convention up in Boston in July. As they were leaving they stopped and
asked him for directions. He said, leave here, and go vote
Republican. (Laughter and applause.)
But we want everybody, regardless of party affiliation, obviously.
And again, this is an important election this year. We appreciate the
fact that you all were here this morning. And remember us on November
2nd, and get all your friends out there and -- and be thankful and
grateful that as Americans we have this tremendous privilege to
participate in the process and we should not take it lightly.
Thank you very much for being here. (Applause.)
END 12:35 P.M. CDT
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