For Immediate Release
Office of the Vice President
July 27, 2004
Vice President's Remarks and Q&A; at Rossi Luncheon
July 26, 2004
Three Rivers Convention Center
Kennewick, Washington
12:18 P.M. PDT
THE VICE PRESIDENT: (Applause.) Thank you. Thank you all very
much. I want to thank you for the warm welcome. It is great to be
back in the state of Washington. Lynne and I have been looking forward
to this event for a long time -- every chance we get to come back to
this part of the country. Just a couple of weeks ago we were able to
go to our 45th high school reunion in Casper, Wyoming. It was a fun
night. Some of the people there remembered me. (Laughter.) There
were a few who said, whatever happened to Cheney? (Laughter.)
But we enjoyed the trip very much. And to pick up on Lynne's
story, I can remember 50 years ago this summer, as a matter of fact,
coming to Richland, Washington, to play in a pony league baseball
tournament. The other -- we didn't win. (Laughter.) But the other
memorable part of that summer was that's the summer we moved to
Wyoming.
Dad had worked for the Soil Conservation Service down in Lincoln,
Nebraska. And I explain to people that when Dwight Eisenhower got
elected, the Agriculture Department got reorganized. Dad got shipped
to Casper, Wyoming. And that's where I met Lynne, and we grew up
together, and went to high school together. And we'll celebrate our
40th wedding anniversary come August. But I explained to a group the
other night, if it hadn't been for that tremendous election victory by
Dwight Eisenhower in 1952, Lynne would have married somebody else. And
she said, right, and how he'd be Vice President of the United States.
(Laughter and applause.) And we all know that's absolutely true.
(Laughter.)
But we're spending this week traveling up and down the West. We
are headed to Oregon later today. Tomorrow, we'll be in California, a
trip to Salt Lake on Wednesday, and then a brief stop at home in
Jackson, Wyoming, and then back up here again in Yakima on Friday. So
it's going to be a great week, and we're looking forward to the
campaign.
Especially we're looking forward to it now because I now have an
opponent. And a few weeks ago -- (Laughter.) A few weeks ago, I
called Senator Edwards, when he was announced, to welcome him to the
race. We had a friendly conversation. People keep telling me -- they
say that Senator Edwards got picked for his good looks, his charm, and
great hair. I said, how do you think I got this job? (Laughter.)
But I always count it a privilege to speak on behalf of a fine
candidate for public office, and here in Washington you have one of our
party's rising stars. It's been a while since you've had a Republican
governor in Olympia, but I have a feeling that your wait is coming to
an end. (Applause.) Dino Rossi knows exactly what Washington needs in
a governor. And by the 2nd of November, voters all over this state are
going to know he's the man for the job. (Applause.)
It's also my pleasure to bring good wishes to each and every one of
you from the President of the United States, George W. Bush.
(Applause.) The President and I are grateful for our supporters in
Washington, and here in the Tri-Cities area. And we deeply appreciate
the support you've given us in the past. We ran hard in this state in
2000, and came close to victory. We're going to work even harder for
your support this time around. And this year, Washington is going to
be part of a nationwide victory for us on November 2nd. (Applause.)
You have an outstanding tradition of public service here in the
state of Washington. You're well served in our Nation's Capital by
your superb Congressman, Doc Hastings, who is here with us today. Doc
is down front here. (Applause.) And next year, you'll be able to
count on a United States Senator named George Nethercutt. (Applause.)
And we're here today to make absolutely certain that Dino Rossi is the
next Governor of the state of Washington. (Applause.)
It doesn't take long to get a sense of the Dino's priorities. As
an experienced state legislator and successful businessman, he knows
that Washington needs to change the way that it does business. As your
governor, he'll carry out a common sense plan to streamline regulations
and create jobs. He'll also stand up for the values that unite all
Washingtonians -- a quality education for every child; more affordable
access to health care for families; and a compassionate government,
committed to helping the most vulnerable in our society. Dino's
campaign is based on strong convictions and sound principles, and he's
off to a great start. With your help, he'll keep that momentum going
for the next 99 days -- and come Election Day, the voters of Washington
will make him your next governor. (Applause.)
What I'd like to do today is a little bit different than what we
ordinarily do out on the road, but I'd like to make a few remarks, and
then have an opportunity to hear from all of you and throw it open to
questions. So we'll have some people around the room with mics, and
we'll take questions from the audience and try to respond to your
concerns and whatever advice you'd care to offer, as well, too.
For first of all, let me make a couple of remarks about this year's
election because I think it truly is one of the most remarkable and
important elections in my lifetime. And I say that not just because
this year I'm on the ballot. I think as a nation, we are facing one of
the great challenges in our history. We're facing an enemy today that
is every bit as intent on destroying us as were the Axis powers in
World War II, or the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
The enemy -- in the words of the 9/11 Commission report just issued
-- is, and I quote, "sophisticated, patient, disciplined, and lethal."
"What this enemy wants," as the 9/11 report explains, "is to do away
with democracy and impose its radical beliefs upon the world."
And this enemy is perfectly prepared to slaughter anyone -- man,
woman, or child -- to advance its cause. This is not an enemy we can
reason with, or negotiate with, or appease. This is, to put it simply,
an enemy that must be vanquished. And under the determined leadership
of President George W. Bush that is exactly what we will do.
(Applause.)
From the moment we were attacked on September 11th and lost 3,000
of our fellow citizens, our President has been focused and steadfast.
Under his leadership, we removed the Taliban from power in Afghanistan
and closed down the training camps where terrorists trained to kill
Americans. Under his leadership, we removed the regime of Saddam
Hussein, a man who cultivated weapons of mass destruction, who had used
them against his own people, and had provided safe harbor for
terrorists. Saddam Hussein once controlled the lives and future of
nearly 25 million. Today, he's in jail. (Applause.)
What this President has accomplished in three-and-a-half years is
remarkable, but the danger has not passed. The threat remains. And in
the time ahead, we need the same steadfast presidential leadership that
we have had over the last three-and-a-half years.
As Dino knows, the security of our nation has to be a first
concern. But our nation's strength also depends on the health of our
economy. When George Bush and I stood on the inaugural platform at the
U.S. Capitol and took the oath of office, our economy was sliding
toward recession. To set it on the right path, the President worked
with Congress to provide tax relief for the American people -- not
once, not twice, but three times.
The tax cuts have helped our national economy create jobs for 10
consecutive months. We've added more than a million and a half new
jobs since last August. Here in Washington state, more than 55,000
people have gone to work at a new job over the last year. The national
home ownership rate is a record high. Business investment is growing.
Consumer confidence is at a two-year high. And personal incomes are on
the rise. The economy is strong and growing stronger. And to keep it
moving forward, we need to continue the pro-growth, pro-jobs agenda of
President George W. Bush for four more years. (Applause.)
There are many other areas that I could touch on today, but I would
like to hear from you, so let me mention just one more before we go to
questions. During the past three-and-a-half years, President Bush has
defended our society's fundamental rights and values. We stand for the
fair treatment of faith-based charities so they can receive federal
support for their good works. We stand for a culture of life, and we
reject the brutal practice of partial birth abortion. We believe that
our nation is "one nation under God." And we believe that Americans
ought to be able to say "under God" when they pledge allegiance to the
flag. (Applause.)
The founders of this great country acknowledged God in the
Declaration of Independence. But we have judges now who seem to have
forgotten this history. We also have a situation in the United States
Senate where Democrats, including Senators Kerry and Edwards, make sure
that the Senate does not get to vote on may of the President's
nominees.
Just last week, Democrats used their filibuster, their
obstructionist tactics, to keep the Senate from voting on four of the
sensible, mainstream nominees that the President sent forward. One of
them was a man named Bill Myers, a fine man with widespread bipartisan
support for his personal integrity, his judicial temperament, and his
legal experience. I know him well because he used to work for the
Wyoming delegation in the Congress, and he married a woman who worked
on my staff. If Bill had made it to the Senate floor, he would have
been confirmed to the Ninth Circuit, because he had the votes. And you
all know, of course, that the Ninth Circuit decided that we should not
be able to say "under God" when we pledge allegiance to the flag.
Looks to me like the Ninth Circuit could use some new judges.
(Applause.)
What the Democrats in the Senate are doing is simply outrageous.
And in the months ahead, I want you to keep that in mind as you work to
elect George Nethercutt to the United States Senate. (Applause.)
Let me conclude here by saying that the President and I are looking
forward to the campaign ahead, and I know Dino is, too. And with your
help, November 2nd is going to be a great Republican day here in
Washington state, and all across the nation.
Now I'd be happy to take your questions. Got one over here.
Q Thank you, Mr. Vice President, for coming to Tri-Cities and
supporting Dino Rossi. Could you offer some more thoughts and comments
on the work of the 9/11 Commission?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: I could -- and I will. (Laughter.) I haven't
completed reading the report. I brought it with me this weekend, and
I'm about halfway through it. Let me commend it to you. I don't agree
with absolutely everything that's in it, but I think it is very well
done as a document -- as government documents go. Some of those
reports of commissions can be awfully dry. But I think you'll find
this report engrossing once you get into it, and start and begin to
understand exactly what did happen on 9/11 and in the run-up to it. So
I would commend it to you in that regard.
The important thing now, obviously, is what we do going forward by
way of reforms designed to address any weaknesses that have been
uncovered in the course of those investigations. And the President is
committed to doing that. So we're in the process now -- we had a
session just this morning, where we began that process of looking
specifically at specific recommendations that they've made. And I
think we're at the beginning here of what will be and should be a great
debate as we look at how we can improve, both the executive branch and
legislative branch's ability to function in this area, to deal with
these kinds of threats, and to defeat these kinds of attacks before
they can actually be mounted in the future. So I think they've done a
good job. I think they deserve a lot of credit for having taken on a
very tough assignment, and they deserve our thanks.
Out here.
Q Mr. Vice President and Mrs. Cheney, thank you very much for
coming back to New Columbia. We appreciate it very much. My question
is, perhaps you could give some examples of how and why the nation is
safer after 9/11; and perhaps, more importantly, what can we, as
citizens do to assist those efforts?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, in terms of the aftermath of 9/11, and
how we've improved our overall situation, a lot of work has already
been done to tighten up and improve our capacity to operate.
One of the major problems, for example, that existed before 9/11
had to do with the inability of the CIA and the FBI to share
information. Part of that, frankly, had been encouraged over the years
because we were always so concerned about not letting the CIA get
involved in domestic affairs. We wanted to keep our spies, our
intelligence collection apparatus focused overseas, not operating here
at home. But we obviously paid a price for that on 9/11 when we had a
lack of communications, if you will, back and forth between the CIA and
the FBI. That's one of the areas that now is addressed much more
effectively because every morning in the Oval Office, at 8:30 there's a
meeting in front of the President where the Director of the FBI and the
Director of the CIA sit down and we talk about common threats. And
that happens about five days a week now. So the coordination is right
at the very top, and it goes all the way down through the agencies.
And within the FBI, there's been a lot of work done by Bob Mueller,
the director, to reorient the bureau. What the bureau is very good at,
and what they've done over the years is to go to the crime scene after
the crime has been committed, find out who did it, develop the case,
and prosecute the guilty party. You think about the Oklahoma City
bombing, for example, back in '95. They did a wondrous job of showing
up on site, finding a very small piece of metal off the truck that was
used for the truck bomb, and eventually out of that, building a case
that led to the arrest and ultimate prosecution of Timothy McVeigh.
That's a very different kind of role, though, than a situation of
preempting an attack, stopping the attack before it gets launched. And
the emphasis that Mueller has developed inside the bureau, in terms of
how they're organized and so forth, the extent to which they do
analysis is much more heavily focused now than it used to be on
preventing attacks rather than going out and finding out who did the
attack after it has occurred. It's a difference, a change if you will
from counterterrorism -- to counterterrorism from traditional law
enforcement.
In other areas that I would emphasize in terms of the response of
U.S. policy, there were a series of attacks by terrorists over the
years going back many years prior to 9/11, where the terrorists learned
two lessons. There was the Beirut barracks bombed in 1983. We lost
240 Marines. The World Trade Center attack, in 1993; the attack in the
Khobar Tower in Saudi Arabia, in '96; East Africa embassies in Tanzania
and Kenya, in 1998; the USS Cole, where we lost 17 sailors in the year
2000 -- think back on those attacks; in no instance was there very
effective response to any of those attacks. We'd go out and try to
find the guilty parties. In some cases, we were successful. Some of
them are in prison. But we never really reached behind that to strike
at the heart of the organization that was responsible for those
attacks. And there were different organizations. They weren't all the
same. Beirut, for example, was Hezbollah. Al Qaeda maybe in '93,
certainly later on. But that lesson that they learned was that they
could strike us with relative impunity. And they had repeatedly. At
most we'd shot off a few cruise missiles at their camps in
Afghanistan.
The second lesson they learned was they could change U.S. policy,
that if you struck the U.S. hard enough, that we would respond as we
did, for example, in '83 in Beirut when we took our forces out of
Lebanon shortly after. In 1993, in Mogadishu, in Somalia, we had the
battle in Mogadishu, we lost 19 soldiers that day. And within weeks,
we'd pulled all our forces out of Somalia. So they had learned those
two unfortunate lessons: one, they could strike us with impunity;
secondly, they could do so in a way that would force us to change our
policy.
That ended on 9/11. The President on 9/11 made the decision first
and foremost that we would no longer make a distinction between states
that sponsored terror, or hosted terrorists, or provided safe harbor
for terrorists on the one hand and the terrorists themselves. If you
provided safe haven for terrorists, you were going to be on our list
just as much as the terrorists themselves.
And the first emphasis on that, of course, is in Afghanistan, where
we went in and took down the Taliban, closed the camps, captured or
killed hundreds of al Qaeda. And we've responded far more aggressively
since 9/11 with respect to U.S. forces, U.S. intelligence capabilities
-- both in Afghanistan and Iraq -- than anything that had gone before.
And I think that has been a key strategic decision, if you will, that
we had to do that.
Once you recognize this isn't a law enforcement problem, that
there's no way to negotiate with these people. It doesn't matter how
many of them you put in prison. In the end, you have to go destroy the
terrorists before they can launch more attacks against the United
States. And that's the key to success, and that's the policy and the
strategy that we're now pursuing. (Applause.)
Q Mr. Vice President, have you had a chance to visit with the
troops recently?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: I do, every chance I get. I was up at McChord
Air Force Base not long ago. And tomorrow, I'll be down at Camp
Pendleton, spending some time with the Marines down there. What I like
to do is go and have an opportunity to speak to a large group. But
then also, we -- and we'll do this again tomorrow -- we'll pull
together maybe two dozen soldiers, primarily enlisted, maybe some
noncommissioned officers, and I'll sit down in the room with them, and
then we'll have a bull session -- talk to them, find out what on their
minds. It's a great way for me to get filled in on their experiences,
the kinds of problems they've been encountering in terms of their
operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. I learn a lot from those kinds of
sessions, so I do that on a regular basis. And as I say, the next one
is going to be tomorrow morning down at Pendleton.
Yes.
Q Good afternoon, Mr. Vice President, I'm hoping that you can
tell some of us -- all of us here, what we can do to help make sure
that you and the President win this state? (Laughter and applause.)
THE VICE PRESIDENT: I thought you'd never ask. (Laughter.) Well,
I guess, the things I would emphasize, it's important for people to
understand the significance of the decisions we're going to make. I
can't think of a more appropriate setting to have the kind of debate
we're going to have both on foreign policy and national security policy
with respect to how we prosecute the war on terror and defend the
nation, as well as economic policy -- because I think there are
fundamental differences there. And the decision we make on November
2nd in those areas will shape the course of history maybe for the next
20, 30, 40 years. I think it's potentially that kind of really
significant election. It's not one for anybody who really cares about
the country to sit out. Regardless of what your political views are,
this is a time when people need to get actively and aggressively
involved in exercising their franchise to cast a vote. I obviously
have a favorite in this race. (Laughter.) And I think the important
thing is to get people organized, to sign up and make sure you and your
family and friends are registered to vote. There's ample opportunity
at www.georgewbush.com. I think that's the right website, to get
actively involved. We're building and extensive organization
nationwide in all of the states and counties, and down to the county
and precinct-level, in terms of getting volunteers to sign up to make
sure we identify our voters, and that we can get them to the polls on
Election Day. I am pleased to say that as I get out and travel the
country, I think we're better organized at an earlier stage now than we
ever have been. But I think the opposition is equally committed to the
task. And I think it's going to be a good, hard fought contest. And
that's as it should be. That's how we make these fundamental decisions
for the nation. But I think it's that combination of things of making
sure everybody understands the momentous nature of these decisions that
we're going to be making on November 2nd, that it will affect the
safety and security of our kids and grandkids for a good many years to
come, and that there's no more important obligation as a citizen than
to participate in that process and take advantage of our constitutional
right to get out there and mix it up and round up as many voters as you
can, and to commit the time, and effort, and energy to make it happen.
Final point, don't let anybody tell you that your vote or your
contribution, or your volunteer time doesn't matter. Remember the last
election was ultimately decided by 537 votes in the state of Florida.
That was it. The closest election, perhaps, in history. So it all
matters. It all counts -- every community, every county, every
precinct, every volunteer-effort hour that goes into it is crucial to
our success. And we need your help. (Applause.)
Q Mr. Cheney, I'll be the last question. I just want to really
thank you again for the administration's support for eastern
Washington, with George W coming to Spokane and you in the Tri-Cities.
How is your health? (Laughter.)
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I go back on a regular basis. They
watch me, monitor me very carefully. Not only -- of course, my wife
does. That's what wives are for -- (Laughter) -- to make sure that
you're moderate in your behavior. But I go back on a regular basis.
And I just completed, about a month ago, my annual check-up. And
they've certified me for another 30,000 miles. (Laughter and
applause.)
Again, I want to thank all of you for being here today. This is an
extraordinarily important race here in Washington this year. Dino
Rossi is an outstanding candidate. He's going to make a great
governor.
Thank you very much for helping. (Applause.)
END 12:43 P.M. PDT
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