Cheney Softens Comments on Kerry and Terror Threat
GREEN BAY, Wis. (Reuters) - Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites) on Friday tempered comments he made earlier this week that warned of the risk of another terrorist attack if Democratic Sen. John Kerry (news - web sites) were elected president.
In an interview with the Cincinnati Enquirer, Cheney said he wanted to "clear up" the stir created by his remarks, which he made Tuesday in the Des Moines, Iowa.
"I did not say if Kerry is elected, we will be hit by a terrorist attack," Cheney said in an interview with the newspaper during a campaign swing through the battleground states of Ohio and Wisconsin where he is working to bring swing voters to the Republican side.
The vice president said what he had meant was that if the United States is attacked again, he believed Kerry would fall back on a "pre-9/11 mind-set" on foreign policy instead of the "pre-emptive" doctrine pursued by President Bush (news - web sites).
After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States the Bush administration adopted a policy of pre-emptive military action to attack foes before they could become a threat.
"Whoever is elected president has to anticipate more attacks. My point was the question before us is: Will we have the most effective policy in place to deal with that threat? George Bush (news - web sites) will pursue a more effective policy than John Kerry," Cheney said in the interview.
Kerry campaign spokesman Phil Singer responded that "Sen. Kerry has been very clear in saying he will hunt down and kill the terrorist before they get us."
Cheney, at a town hall appearance in Des Moines on Tuesday, said it was essential that Americans make the right choice in the Nov. 2 president election "because if we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we'll get hit again."
"We'll get hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States and that we'll fall back into the pre-9/11 mindset if you will that in fact these terrorist attacks are just criminal acts and that we're not really at war."
Kerry's vice presidential running mate, North Carolina Sen. John Edwards (news - web sites), responded on Tuesday that Cheney was using "scare tactics" and said it showed "once again that he and George Bush will do anything and say anything to save their jobs." |
