For Immediate Release
Office of the Vice President
October 9, 2003
Remarks by the Vice President at a Bush-Cheney '04 Reception
Civic Center Music Hall
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
6:03 P.M. CDT
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, thank you very much, Don. I really
appreciate those kind remarks. And Don Nickles is going to be missed.
I got to tell you I understand -- (applause) -- I understand. I talked
to Don the other day, just before he made his announcement, on the
telephone. And I couldn't lean on him too hard because he reminded me
that after 25 years of service, I hung it up and went to the private
sector, and thought I'd found a home. (Laughter.) But I got drafted
back, and we may get him back at some point. But Don and Linda have
just done a superb job. (Applause.)
It's always been remarkable to watch Don operate. Of course, he
arrived there at a tender age of what, about 30 or 31. But he always
had a basic, fundamental set of principles that he operated by. And
Washington is full of people who aren't quite sure what they believe,
or they believe one thing one moment and something else the next. Don
Nickles -- you knew that he had a basic fundamental set of values that
he cared about, that he believed in, and that he lived his life by and
that he helped govern by. And he's been a great senator for the last
24 years, and he will be missed. But we're going to get a lot of work
out of him before he hangs it up. So anyway, I'm delighted to be here
tonight. And, Don, I want to thank you for those remarks and for all
that you've done for Oklahoma and for America. It's all right, you can
applaud. (Laughter and applause.)
Also, I know Jim Inhofe well. Jim and I served together in the
House. And as Don pointed out, as the President of the Senate now, I
go up and have lunch on Tuesdays with my fellow colleagues, the Senate
Republicans -- because I am the President of the Senate. I actually
get paid by the Senate. That's where my paycheck comes from.
Until the Eisenhower administration when Richard Nixon was Vice
President, the Vice President didn't even have an office downtown in
the executive branch. Vice Presidents lived on Capitol Hill, in the
Senate. They were creatures of the Senate.
And my predecessor, John Adams, of course, who was our first Vice
President, he not only got to cast tie-breaking votes, he also had
floor privileges. He could go down into the well of the House -- the
well of the Senate and debate the issues of the day, engage in
give-and-take. And then he did a few times and they withdrew his floor
privileges. (Laughter.) They've never been restored. So I'm not
allowed to speak, but I do get to cast the tie -- key votes.
You've also got some great Republicans in your congressional
delegation in the House: John Sullivan, Frank Lucas, Tom Cole, and
Ernie Istook. I loved the House of Representatives. As Don pointed
out, I served there 10 years. I was the congressman from Wyoming.
Wyoming only has one congressman. (Laughter.) It was a small
delegation. (Laughter.) But it was quality. (Laughter.) And I really
enjoyed my time in the House.
But I've also gotten to know Mayor Humphries over the years and
watched him with great interest. He's been, as Don said, a great
mayor. And I want to wish him well. And I know the Lieutenant
Governor, Mary Fallin, is here today, as well, too. I want to thank
her for being here. (Applause.)
I had sort of a political speech I was going to give today, but
when I came down, I had some extra time. And since I've been involved
with the Oklahoma City Memorial early on, Polly Nichols and Frank
Keating and some others recruited me in that effort, which I was happy
to do. I'd never had a chance to go back and visit the memorial since
it was completed, the museum and so forth. And I did that today. And
it has enormous impact. All of you who live here in Oklahoma City and
went through those events in 1995 obviously know the consequences of
terror firsthand. And I'm a little reluctant to talk about some of
those problems with people who have such personal experience with it.
But I think it's important for us to spend a few minutes on it today.
And I thought that what I'd do is talk about our current situation
because I really think this election next year, that you've signed on
to be a part of now by being here this afternoon, by contributing your
money and your time to the effort, it's going to be a very important
election.
We've had to make some fundamental choices since 9/11. And the
nation will have to make some fundamental choices as we go forward.
And I thought I'd just take a few minutes this afternoon and try to put
those circumstances in context, if you will.
In a sense 9/11 changed everything for how, as a government, we
think about national security, about how we defend America, about we
protect ourselves. What we discovered on 9/11 is that we were, in
fact, at war. Our adversaries had figured that out sometime before.
If you go look back at recent history, 1993, the first attack on the
World Trade Center in New York, now, was probably the first al Qaeda
attack against the United States. We had a series of attacks -- not
only domestic, homegrown terrorists, such as here in Oklahoma -- but
especially the foreign-bred kind, if you will: the attacks on Khobar
Towers, 1996; the bombing of our embassies in East Africa, in '98; the
USS Cole, in 2000, et cetera.
We tended to look at each of those as isolated, separate
incidents. And we didn't come to realize until 9/11 that we were up
against an enemy who had been plotting and carrying out attacks against
us for some considerable period of time. We now know from having
captured Khalid Shaykh Muhammad, the mastermind -- the apparent
mastermind of the attacks of 9/11, that he first broached the subject
to Osama bin Laden of using airplanes in an attack against the United
States in 1996, five years before the actual attack occurred.
And what we discovered was that we'd had a series of attacks that
the United States had never responded very effectively to, that we were
-- had not developed a strategy that would work. The old Cold War
military strategy that was so successful for us in the last half of the
20th century, when we defeated communism, the idea of holding the
Soviet Union at risk so they were never tempted to launch an attack
against the United States, a strategy of deterrence, containment with
our allies and so forth, those were concepts that don't really apply
when you're talking about an organization like al Qaeda. They don't
have anything they value highly enough that you can put at risk in
order to deter them from attacking the United States.
So we needed a new strategy. And that's what we've developed.
First and foremost, of course, we've worked to harden the target, to
make it more difficult to launch strikes against the United States,
created the Department of Homeland Security, the biggest reorganization
of the federal government in over 50 years. But we also know that a
perfect defense is not enough. You've also go to go on offense.
You've got be prepared to go eliminate the terrorists, take down the
terrorist structure and network before they can launch further attacks
against the United States. And of course, we've done that. We've now
wrapped up a large portion of the known terrorists who were involved in
the 9/11 attacks. And we've had enormous success. We've still got
more to do. But without question, we've put a real dent in their
organization.
We had to put together an effort to go after their financial
networks and support because they can't operate without that kind of
support. They get it from various places around the world, and for the
first time, we've got a fairly effective strategy for going after their
financial networks.
We've worked very closely with intelligence organizations all over
the world -- in some cases with intelligence organizations from
countries that aren't necessarily, ordinarily deemed to be friends of
the United States.
But most significantly was the doctrine that President Bush
announced that first night after the attack on 9/11, what's come to be
known as the Bush doctrine, that we would hold accountable -- just as
we went after the terrorists, we would hold accountable those who
supported terror, those who sponsored it, states that provided safe
harbor and sanctuary for terrorists. And that's exactly what we've
done.
Now, that's been somewhat controversial. We've had some suggest,
for example, that we should never use U.S. troops without the approval
the U.N. Security Council. But that, in effect, would put us in a
position where faced with a serious threat, which we believe we had to
act against, of allowing one nation, or a handful of nations to veto
U.S. military action.
The problem we have now is that the biggest threat of all is the
possibility of the terrorists acquiring deadly weapons -- deadlier than
anything we've ever known. And we know from the training camps in
Afghanistan, and the people we've captured and interrogated that the al
Qaeda organization wants to do everything they can to try to acquire
weapons of mass destruction -- chemical, biological, or even nuclear
weapons.
And the ultimate nightmare is the idea of a cell of the al Qaeda
organization loose in one of our cities with a nuclear weapon or a
biological weapon. That's the ultimate threat today. And given that,
it's important for us not to fall back on the arguments that some have
made that we should not act until the threat is imminent or until we've
been struck. We cannot afford to have such an attack ever take place
against the United States. And the only way to prevent that is to
ensure that, first of all, the terrorists never acquire or develop
weapons of mass destruction, and, secondly, that we go out and defeat
the terrorists on their home ground before they ever get a chance to
launch an attack again inside our cities.
This is a somewhat controversial strategy, but I think it's exactly
the right strategy. It's a decision the President made early on. It
is a significant departure from the past. But I would argue that we
were struck on 9/11 when we lost some 3,000 of our people that day;
that it was a more devastating attack than what happened to us at Peal
Harbor, in terms of loss of life; and that whatever rationale or
justification we needed to use military force to defend America, we got
on that day.
The campaign itself and the efforts that have been mounted have
been, I think, very successful. In Afghanistan, we went in and took
down the Taliban and the al Qaeda organization. Now we've stood up a
new government in its place. They'll hold free elections next year.
We've got Mr. Karzai in charge on an interim basis. There's a lot of
work to be done yet. We'll have to have American forces in there.
We've got some 9,000 or 10,000 American troops there tonight. But
we'll have to stay until we can root out all the bad guys, until we can
make sure the new government is strong enough to sustain itself. We're
building an Afghan National Army. They'll be able, at some point, to
be able to take over and undertake these tasks and assignments for
themselves.
But it's very important we get it right. We do not want
Afghanistan to revert back to what it was before 9/11, when it was a
failed state, when it couldn't guarantee the security of its own
territory, when terrorists were able to come into Afghanistan, for
years, operate training camps to train thousands of terrorists and then
ultimately launch attacks against the United States.
The consequences of what went on in Afghanistan, we're having to
live with today. Because not only have we had the attacks in New York
and Washington on 9/11, we've also had attacks in Mombasa, Riyadh,
Casablanca, Bali, Jakarta, Baghdad -- attacks perpetrated, in many
cases, by people who received training in those training camps in the
late '90s in Afghanistan.
If we fail to act now, the cost will be greater, and it'll take a
longer period of time, and the task will be even more difficult. So
it's important we get it right in Afghanistan today.
We obviously moved on Iraq, as well, too. And Iraq was a special
problem because not only did you have a state that was run by one of
the most brutal dictatorships of modern times, but a state that
acquired and used weapons of mass destruction, and that sponsored and
provided safe harbor to terrorists, and had for many years. That
regime is no more. Thanks to the magnificent work of the American
Armed Forces, Saddam's government is gone. It will never return.
And again, we're making major progress there in standing up a new
government, getting power restored. We're back up to prewar levels in
terms of electricity now. The oil industry is coming back. This is a
nation that has potential significant wealth. And if we can get them
back on their feet, they'll be able to establish in the Middle East, in
the heart of the area that's been responsible for the attacks launched
against the United States, a vibrant, viable, representative
government, democratically elected, that will set a model for that part
of the world and will demonstrate that there is an alternative -- an
alternative that works -- to the kind of radical, hate-filled
philosophy that drives the terrorists who have attacked us and so many
other places around the world.
We can do it. We know we can do it. As I say, as a former
Secretary of Defense, I've never been more proud of the job that the
men and women in the U.S. military are doing for us. They've been
superb. (Applause.)
As we go forward, next year, the campaign is going to come in due
course. Some would say it's already here. And it will be a tough,
hard fought campaign, as it should be. Selecting the President of the
United States is important business. And it's vital that we get it
right because we are faced with a whole new set of challenges in a new
century. I'm optimistic that we can do it, confident that we can, in
fact, prevail in the course that we've now embarked upon because I
think the America people support it. I think it's exactly the right
thing to do, and what it needs most of all at this stage is strong,
firm, decisive leadership. Weakness, vacillation, indecision in the
face of a threat invites attack. We know that now. The
turn-the-other-cheek strategy for dealing with terror will not work.
It never has, and it won't now.
So our task is to do everything we can to achieve our objectives
and to make this nation much more safe and secure for our kids and
grandkids that if it would be if we tried to pass this threat on to the
next generation and refused to face up and deal with it now when it's a
manageable proposition for us.
So I want to thank all of you for being here tonight. I want to
thank you for your willingness to sign on, as I say, to support the
effort. The President and I are deeply grateful for the support you
provided. Oklahoma gave us a great vote in 2000. We didn't need a
recount here in Oklahoma. (Laughter.) And we won't need one next time
either, right, Don? (Applause.)
But thank you all for what you've done for all of us, and we'll do
our level best to give you the kind of government you can be proud of.
Thank you very much. (Applause.)
END 6:20 P.M. CDT
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