Cheney@West Point [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
From his commencement address today:
In the group that graduates today, and among the cadets watching from the stands, we have dozens of future officers that are already combat veterans. You've been to Iraq and Afghanistan. You've seen the enemy and his tactics. You've been part of an Army that has faced unprecedented challenges; an Army at war that is, without question, the finest ever fielded by the United States of America.
We're fighting a war on terror because the enemy attacked us first, and hit us hard. Scarcely 50 miles from this place, we saw thousands of our fellow citizens murdered, and 16 acres of a great city turned to ashes. Others were killed within view of the White House, at the headquarters of our military at the Pentagon. Many heroes emerged that day, both on board an aircraft over Pennsylvania and among the rescue teams, and they, too, died in the hundreds.
These are events we can never forget. And they are scenes the enemy would like to see played out in this country over and over again, on a larger and larger scale. Al Qaeda's leadership has said they have the right to "kill four million Americans, two million of them children, and to exile twice as many and to wound and cripple thousands." We know they are looking for ways of doing just that — by plotting in secret, by slipping into the country, and exploiting any vulnerability they can find.
We know, also, that they're working feverishly to obtain ever more destructive weapons, and using every form of technology they can get their hands on. And this makes the business of fighting this war as urgent and time-sensitive as any task this nation has ever taken on. As the Director of National Intelligence, Admiral Mike McConnell, said recently, "The time needed to develop a terrorist plot, communicate it around the globe, and put it into motion has been drastically reduced. The time line is no longer a calendar, it is a watch."
For nearly six years now, the United States has been able to defeat their attempts to attack us here at home. Nobody can guarantee that we won't be hit again. But we've been safe because a lot of very dedicated professionals have been working relentlessly to protect the homeland. Our government has used every legitimate tool to counter the activities of an enemy that likely has cells inside our own country. We've improved our security arrangements, reorganized intelligence capabilities, surveilled and interrogated the enemy, and worked closely with friends and allies to track terrorist movements.
All of these steps have been necessary to harden the target and to protect the American people. But we've also understood, from the early hours of September 11th, that we cannot wage this fight strictly on the defensive. We have to go after the terrorists, shut down their training camps, take down their networks, deny them sanctuary, and bring them to justice. In that effort, some of the most difficult and dangerous work has been carried out by the U.S. Army. America is the kind of country that stands up to brutality, terror, and injustice. And you are the kind of people we depend on to get the job done.
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