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Cheney meets with Lee Enterprises executives, editors
By Times staff report
Following is a transcript of a meeting Tuesday morning between Vice President Dick Cheney and executives and editors from Lee Enterprises and its newspapers.
Mark Ridolfi, Editorial Page Editor, QUAD-CITY TIMES: Mr. Vice President, Our Iowa guard and reserve troops have shouldered a bigger share of the Iraq war deployment and casualties than any coalition member except Great Britain. Help us understand how you and President Bush in another term can rebuild that coalition which now appears to be shrinking?
Vice President Cheney: We have a positive result you saw just this weekend in Australia, where John Howard was re-elected by a comfortable margin. There’s been some question about whether or not his support for our operations and participation and operations in Iraq would cost him in the polls but it would appear it did not. There is, I think from the standpoint of what we have been able to accomplish so far, the important thing is to recognize that there is a coalition and has been a coalition for some time. We had 30 countries participating in the operation in Iraq. We’ve got about 40 that have participated in Afghanistan. Our opponents are probably saying you went alone, you went alone, you went alone; it’s not true.
Fact is, John Kerry held out the Desert Storm coalition of 1990 and ‘91 as the model of the way it ought to be done. Then, we had 34 countries working alongside us and, of course, the U.N. Security Council supported that effort as well, too. John Kerry was opposed to it and voted against it. The bottom line here is, we have had a coalition here. I think it’s a good one. Individual countries will make their decisions about how long they participate in the nature and scope of their participation, but today we have about 20,000 coalition troops, non-U.S. coalition troops, in Iraq and I don’t expect significant changes and maybe some modifications from time to time or adjustments. But I think I would expect we’ll see roughly that level of participation for the next several months anyway.
Ridolfi: You’ve mentioned some overtures from other nations to help grow the coalition?
Vice President Cheney: Well, we have continued to work and I think that the U.N. will continue to work as the security situation improves, which may not be until after we get the election behind us. It’s hard to predict. But we’ve been seeing more nations willing to come in, for example, and be part of the security force involved in the election to providing security for U.N. personnel there to participate in or oversee the election. So it will be a continuing effort. Circumstances on the ground to some extent will affect that. Right now, we’re in a situation where clearly, I believe, I think there’s some evidence to support this, that our adversaries understand that if we’re successful with holding elections in Iraq and establishing a relatively stable representative government that’s got a reach, if you will, into the entire country. That’s curtains for them.
We saw this … earlier this year with bin Laden and members of the al Qaeda who were in effect talking about what would happen when we get to that point, that he’d have to pack his bags and leave. We’ve seen now what happened in Afghanistan, (a) different situation but obviously a lot of similarities. We had that election on Saturday, there’s still a lot of hard work to do. You can find a lot of people out there who will tell you it can’t be done. That’s not an option. We can make it work. We’re going to make it work.
I think Iraqis and members of their government now that they’ve received sovereign authority at the end of June, it’s been in business a little over 90 days. It’s a little premature to judge that somehow this strategy won’t succeed. In the meantime, we’ll have to keep moving as aggressively as we can to train Iraqi forces to keep our own forces engaged in dealing with the terrorists and insurgents that are members of the old regime. But I think we can do the job and we’re happy to have whatever help and assistance we can get from the outside. In the final analysis the ultimate solution in Iraq as it is in Afghanistan is to get the Iraqis and Afghans into the business of governing themselves and being able to provide for their own security, and we are moving aggressively on both fronts in both countries. That’s the strategy.
Richard Mial, Editorial Page Editor, LaCrosse Tribune: Mr. Vice President, several months ago Defense Secretary Rumsfeld referred to the war as a “long slog” and yesterday he raised the possibility of withdrawing troops after the Iraqi election if things go well and security issues go well. Could you give us a realistic and honest testament of what you expect within the next year?
Vice President Cheney: To what is going to happen? The way to think about it, or at least the way the president and I think about it, is that we’ve got to accomplish the mission, and the mission is Iraqi governments and Iraqis being able to provide for their own security. There’s a timetable you can get and look at for example with respect to trading and equipping Iraqi forces. As I recall that number will be about 125,000 by the end of December, by the end of this year, about 145,000 early next year. But we can’t put an artificial deadline on it, say by March or by the end of 2005. We’ll be prepared for example to provide allied U.S. forces and I don’t think Secretary Rumsfeld said that either. He said there’s a possibility that at some point when we get through the election next January that we can begin to reduce forces. But it will all depend on when we can accomplish the mission. We don’t want to set an artificial deadline here that would simply encourage our adversaries to in fact wait and sit quietly, or keep up a certain level of violence, but know if they wait long enough they can outwait us, and then they’ll prevail because of an artificial deadline that we’ve established here at home. The key test is when we’ve completed the mission. We’ve completed the mission when the Iraqis are capable of having a government in place and exercise sovereign authority and when they have security forces sufficient enough to provide for their own security. That time will come depending on development getting the election done in January, how well the Iraqi forces do when they are up and running, trained and equipped, how long it takes to continue to battle the insurgents until they’re no longer a factor that can threaten the overall success of the mission. That’s the way I think of it.
Lee Enterprises Vice President for News, David Stoeffler, reading a question submitted by Dick High, publisher of the North County Times, (Oceanside and Escondido, Calif.), near Camp Pendleton: The early Marine expeditionary force is based there. One of the decisions that is controversial there was the withdrawal of Marines from the battle in Fallujah and the strong international criticism that kind of forced that move. Now the prime minister reportedly is negotiating a settlement in Fallujah that requires Marines to remain outside the city and no longer attack it from the air. The question from Dick is, do you support such an agreement to attempt to keep Marines on a leash?
Vice President Cheney: Well, I have visited the Marines at Camp Pendleton just a couple of months ago and had the opportunity to sit down with a number of the Marines. I usually do this when I visit a military facility. They have most of the officers sit down and have an opportunity to have a dialogue so I talked firs hand with many of them who have served over there and have been or are going on a second tour.
With respect to the operations in Fallujah earlier this year, that was a decision made and recommended not by the White House but by the commanders on the scene working in conjunction with what was there with the Iraqi governing coalition and the Iraqi government council. They were the ones who expressed the desire to try and negotiate an arrangement and determine the security in Fallujah over the so-called Fallujah regime. I think looking back on it now, most people think it didn’t work, that it was a good-faith effort but it was encouraged in part of the members of the governing council and signed up to by our local commanders there.
Right now, with respect to whether or not we pull our punches, I don’t believe we have. I think we hit targets in Fallujah last night (Oct. 11). In the meantime, there is growing evidence that the people in Fallujah, the locals are increasingly fed up with the, I’m trying to think how to describe them, the jihadists, who’ve come on the scene from the outside, who are not Iraqis, who have moved into the area like Mr. (Abu Musab al-) Zarqawi, who we believe has been operating and a number of his people have been operating out of Fallujah for some time. Zarqawi, you remember, is Jordanian by birth, grew up, I guess he was born on a refugee camp in Jordan, who was running the terrorist training camp in Afghanistan prior to 9/11, who when we went into Afghanistan fled to Baghdad where he’s still operating today. He operated or supervised the poisons factory up in Khurmal in northeastern Iraq prior to our launching into Iraq. He is responsible for probably most of the major car bombings we’ve seen … and occasionally shows up on the evening news, beheading the hostage. Very, very bad guy. We have some confidence that at least elements of his organization have been operating out of Fallujah for some time now. We have been going in with targeted strikes, taking down parts of his organization. As I say, we hit one of those targets yesterday (Oct. 11) so there’s been no remedy yet.
With respect to that, it is important going forward to recognize that this is not a situation in which the U.S. will move unilaterally on these kinds of issues. There is now a sovereign Iraqi government. There’s been a sovereign Iraqi government since June. They have a significant role to play in all of this. They will play a major role in making decisions about how to move forward in some of these areas. They were instrumental, for example, in the operation of Najaf and once we got that pretty well closed down then, of course, worked with (Ayatollah Ali al) Sistani, the Shiite leader, in southern Iraq who negotiated final resolution with Mr. (Moqtada) Sadr, where Najaf is concerned. So we won’t operate unilaterally here.
It’s also a matter of when you go and clean out a particular area of the Iraqis having a capability and the training forces to move in behind us and take on responsibility for maintaining order once it’s been established and I’m sure those considerations will enter into it, as well. These decisions will be made, I would say, jointly by the prime minister (Ayad) Allawi and his national security advisers working in conjunction with General (George) Casey, our commander on the scene as well as John Negroponte, our ambassador to Baghdad.
And that’s as it should be — sovereignty means sovereignty. And we did in fact transfer sovereignty to the Iraqis in June. Retaining the rights to operate over there momentarily, which we’ll continue to do as long as necessary. But that places certain limitations in terms of necessity for us to consult with the Iraqis. It probably will not be as efficient as it might be, as if it were strictly a unilaterally U.S. operation. But it’s very important to at some point take your hands off the bicycle seat and let them exercise authority over these kinds of questions and to actively participate in the process. And that’s exactly what’s happening.
David Stoeffler: Just to follow up on what you were saying that back earlier in the year when we pulled out of Fallujah, that the local Marine commanders on the ground in Fallujah supported that move?
Vice President Cheney: I can’t say how far down it went, but I do know that the senior military people in Iraq basically recommended a course of action we took, and that in part was based upon their interaction with the members of the Iraqi governing council who had concerns about our going forward with the military operation at that stage. …Our strategy here long-term is to get the Iraqis up and running so that they can, in fact, be responsible for their own affairs and hold elections and field security forces and make basic fundamental decisions about prosecuting the campaign against the remnants of the old regime and jihadists, then that is exactly what you have to do. So I am, I think, the fair way to evaluate it is, is that in fact that’s the process that is operating now, and that’s as it should be.
Tim Kelley, Editorial Page Editor of the Wisconsin State Journal: Mr. Vice President, a little bit broader question on the war on terror. The administration has long intended that the unusual nature of the terrorist threat requires maximum flexibility trying to confront some dangerous enemies. I am wondering, in a second term, what new fronts would the administration open in the war on terror and what new tools would you need to succeed in prosecuting the war on terror domestically?
Vice President Cheney: I am not going to speculate today on potential targets. It’s a hypothetical question that I don’t think would be appropriate for me to get into. The notion that somehow there is a list out there that we’re working with respect to prospective military action certainly isn’t valid, isn’t true. We’re working, we’ll continue obviously to complete the operation in Afghanistan and Iraq. We have, I think also — and it’s important it not be overlooked — is significant success in Libya as a result of what we did in Afghanistan and Iraq. Moammar Gadhafi contacted us shortly after we launched into Iraq and entered into nine months of negotiations, and then five days after we dug Saddam Hussein out of his hole in north Iraq, Gadhafi went public and announced he was giving up all of his WMD and so all of the uranium, the weapons design, the centrifuge to enrich uranium are now here in the United States under lock and key where they’ll never again be a threat. That’s a very significant development.
That also allowed us to take down the Khan network, run by Mr. Khan, the Pakistani who had been instrumental in creating Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program, but had then diverted his suppliers network to pedaling illegally this technology not only to Libya, but also to North Korea and Iran. And so that network has been pretty well shut down and he’s under house arrest in Pakistan.
We’ll continue to push very hard on the proliferation security initiative that the president started. We now have upwards of 60 countries signed on for that in an effort to coordinate our activities, to, in effect, be able to shut down any trade or transfer of this kind of technology any place in the world. It was instrumental that at one point in the midst of our negotiations with the Libyans that we were able to intercept on the high seas a shipment of centrifuge parts that had been manufactured in Malaysia that were intended for Libya and the demonstration, if you will, of how important it is to get the international community to work, to limit the transfer and trade of these kinds of deadly technologies.
We’ll continue to work aggressively on the North Korean and the Iranian fronts. The situation both places is cause for concern. They both have given every indication that they in fact are pursuing or are prepared to pursue the development of nuclear weapons. In both cases, we’re approaching on the basis of trying diplomacy in working with the case in North Korea with the Japanese, the South Koreans, the Russians, the Chinese, and that effort will continue to receive a lot of attention from us, the hope being that we can persuade the North Koreans that it is in their best interest long-term to give up their aspirations to acquire nuclear weapons and to live up to their obligations under the non-proliferation treaty.
With respect to Iran, we just had a meeting with the board of governors in the International Atomic Energy Agency. There will be another session, I believe in November, and if the Iranians don’t live up to the obligations and commitments they made for greater transparency and to meet the tests that the International Community thinks they need to meet in order to reassure everybody that they are not developing nuclear weapons, then I would expect the next step would be for the board of governors to vote, take that matter before the U.N. Security Council, and seek the application of wide-ranging sanctions on Iran until such time that they agree to give up their aspirations. That will be a focal point I would make: continue to work the terrorism front, on a world-wide basis, it’s not just in Afghanistan and Iraq, although those have been the main focal points. We’ve done a lot in Pakistan for example. President (Pervez) Musharraf has been a great ally, and we’ve grabbed up hundreds of al-Qaeda in Pakistan as a result of the joint efforts between the United States and the government of Pakistan, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the No. 1 mastermind behind 9/11, and we’ll continue to work with the problem in Saudi Arabia and we’ll continue to push aggressively on the Mideast initiatives for political reform and economic reform in that part of the world. A lot of Moroccans, for example, in Moracco, have gotten very aggressive about pursuing reform.
Even the Saudis now are talking about municipal elections for a portion of their local councils for next year. So if you approach it on a lot of different fronts, and I would expect that the second term would continue to do exactlythat, and hopefully we will be able to resolve a lot of this peacefully if necessary, but obviously the president’s demonstrated, and I think to a great benefit as a nation, that he’s prepared to use force when necessary, to confront those who sponsor terror, provide sanctuary and safe harbor terrorists as well as those who go after terrorists themselves, and I don’t expect any big initiative.
Tim Kelley: If I could just follow up specifically about the many fronts on the domestic front, will we see any of these measures in terms of tightening our borders in any way or other initiatives to reduce the threat within our borders?
Vice President Cheney: I’m sure there will be. Tom Ridge has done a good job getting the Department of Homeland Security up and running, but there still, and remember this is the biggest governmental reorganization since 1947 when we did the DOD, so there’s plenty work to be done. We’ve beefed up our border patrol operations, added more people, new technologies and so forth that I don’t think anyone would say it’s perfect yet. We’re doing a lot across the board in terms of making the nation more secure. But there are problems out there. One of the things that I think you’ll see a lot of effort in now is that we have Project BioShield through the Congress finally.
But a real classic example of the problem we have is what has happened with respect to the flu vaccine. We were down to two producers manufacturing the flu vaccine in the world. One of them here in the U.S., and one outfit in Britain. It doesn’t pay to produce flu vaccine. It’s not very profitable, but there’s a significant potential liability in connection with it, potential for lawsuits. So nobody out there is very interested in doing this kind of thing. When you take that proposition and apply to broader questions of developing the antidotes or measures that can be used to defend us if we get hit by other kinds of biological problems, a biological agent of some kind to be used against the United States, smallpox, or other kinds of deadly substances.
The fact of the matter is, it’s difficult to get companies to go invest in the research necessary to produce countermeasures and it’s difficult to get them then to actually produce it because there may never be a market for it. Why produce new modernized smallpox vaccine if you can’t sell it? So what Project BioShield does basically is give the FDA and the National Institute of Health greater authority to bring new products onto the market on an emergency basis. But it also provides permanent appropriation so that if companies do in fact start down the road of developing something we need, the only market for it is potentially the federal government. They’ll know we’ll buy, put it on the shelf and have it there in the event that it is required. So I think you’ll see a lot more activity in that area. Legislation just got passed, just got the program up and running in the last couple of months. That’s an area that needs and will receive a lot of attention over the course of the next period of time.
There’s a lot to be done with technology in terms of developing countermeasures for all kinds of attacks. We’re beginning to scratch the surface there, there’s a lot going on, but now that this is a top priority for the nation and there’s a potential market there clearly for a lot of these kinds of measures, whether we are talking about securing our borders, or developing countermeasures for biological attacks or the ability to attack certain kinds of threats especially from a distance.
Lisa Sievers, publisher of the Muscatine Journal: Mr. Vice President, given the United States’ continued heavy reliance on foreign oil, will the Bush administration, if re-elected, propose any new incentive to expand production and use of domestically produced renewable fuel such as soy diesel and ethanol. Why or why not? And to follow up, what do you see as a reachable time line if this is to occur?
Vice President Cheney: We are committed, the president’s committed to supporting the whole notion of renewable fuel. It is part of the energy plan we put forward about three years ago. It’s in the energy legislation that we’ve gotten through the House. It’s been hung up in the Senate. It’s been through the House and the Senate, and through to conference and then the conference report was approved in the House. It came up two votes short in the Senate. We got filibustered in the Senate and it’s still pending there. But we believe very much in the importance of supporting the biodiesel and ethanol and so forth. We think it’s an important way to reduce our dependence on foreign sources. You’re not going to eliminate it that way but we think it’s important technology, that is here today and it’s doable.
We also think obviously it’s a valuable addition to the demand for farm products and so we’ll continue to support it. I would expect sooner or later we’ll get that diesel legislation that’s now pending before the Senate, get it through. If it doesn’t happen in this term, then we’ll have to go back with another piece of legislation next January. We pushed hard on energy, we’ll continue to push hard on it. The president believes deeply, and I agree with him, that the solution to a lot of problems in this area has been a technological solution.
Our dependence on foreign oil now has become significant, well over half of what we consume every day. We use about 20 million barrels a day. Over half of it imported from overseas. The price yesterday was $53 a barrel. You’ve got to have adequate supplies of affordable energy as a basic fundamental building block of our economy and so recognize that and we’ll continue to push very hard on that. I might add that two of the votes we didn’t get on the energy package in the Senate were John Kerry and John Edwards. They didn’t show up to the vote.
Just wanted to mention that.
Jerome Christenson, Winona Daily News: Mr. Vice President, my daughter out in Los Angeles is now paying over $2.50 for a gallon of gas. In Minnesota, it’s creeping over $2 a gallon. We’ve got heating season coming up and they’re promising us higher fuel bills. What in the second Bush administration can we expect to see to make energy affordable to all Americans on an individual level?
Vice President Cheney: Well, we’ve got to have a comprehensive energy policy in place. We haven’t had one for a very long time in this country. It’s one of the first priorities that the president established when we were sworn in. At the time we had rolling brownouts in California, so we continued to push hard to develop our energy resources. We’ve also made some changes that I think are important in moving us in the right direction. That’s to say we’d be in worse shape if the president hadn’t made some changes. For example, there’s the Kyoto protocol, the Kyoto agreement, that criticizes coal. The fact of the matter is, that by various estimates… we would have to shut down 20 coal plants, half of all our coal-burning plants in the United States by 2020. …. It was an approach that made no sense at all. It also left out some of the developing nations. The president has made some tough decisions that he has taken some flack for but we need to continue to invest as we do in our proposed energy bill and in new technology, and in coal technology so we can satisfy our environmental requirements there.
We need to move aggressively on improving natural gas, natural gas prices are up $6-7 per mcf (thousand cubic feet). We’ve got a vast store of natural gas on the north slope of Alaska, pumping out of the ground every day up there at Prudhoe Bay. With the oil we produce and we reinject the gas back into the ground because there’s no way to get it out of there, it gets it to the lower 48 where we can use it.
So one of the things that’s in the energy bill is a series of incentives and loan guarantees that would encourage the construction of a gas pipeline from the north slope of Alaska, down to the lower 48 and plug it into our network here. That has an impact on the farm economy; obviously, natural gas is a basic feed stock for fertilizers.
So a series of steps like that need to be encouraged and taken with respect to gasoline in particular and those prices here at home.
We have a couple of problems. One is nobody built a new refinery here in the country for like 30 years.
It’s just too hard, it’s too complicated. You can’t get clearances, you can’t get environmental authorization, through. One of the things we did with our energy package was to recommend a modification to the new source review standards that EPA applies to plants when you rehabilitate them or refurbish or expand them. The reason we did that was because the way the new source review standards were being applied. Nobody was willing to, it was getting so expensive, you had to completely retrofit your whole outfit. Nobody was willing to expand their production capacity or refinery because of the new source review. We came up with what we think is a better solution … challenging what we’ve done there so that’s going to get resolved in the courts. But as long as we’re not willing to build any refineries or expand existing refinery capacities that we have in this country, the situation becomes tighter and tighter and tougher and tougher all the time.
When you add to that, of course, all the complexities that’s added to all this we’ve now got about, I think, 51 different standards that have to be met to meet our quality requirements. So the gasoline you burn in Davenport, Iowa, may be different from what you burn in Chicago, may be different than what you burn in Cleveland or Pittsburgh or so forth.
We’re now at the point where it’s difficult to import the proper blends from overseas if you’re going to rely for example on European refineries to satisfy domestic requirements. They don’t produce the blends in the way we need them here at home to meet our quality requirements. Add to that the complexities that we’ve encountered when a hurricane hit the Gulf Coast. We shut down production in the Gulf of Mexico, and all of a sudden the only oil that is available is increased Saudi production which tends to be sour crude. Sour crude is tougher to refine, some refineries aren’t equipped to use that or process that. So again we continually add to the complexity of our whole process and mechanism regulatory structure was increasingly difficult and for us to meet these short-term demands for the problems that occur when there’s a shutdown in the Nigerian field, whether it’s a strike or a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico. All of this adds to and puts pressure on prices here at home. And there’s other things we can do. The administration supported opening up ANWR (Arctic National Wildlife Refuge), an area on the north slope right next to Prudhoe Bay. We think it could be developed very safely and in an environmentally friendly way using modern technology. It’s an area about the size of South Carolina and would need to disturb an area half the size of Dulles Airport to be able to get at that resource. And you could do it in the winter time in a way that’s not going to leave devastation up there in its wake in terms of developing a resource and you’ve got the Alaska pipeline already built coming down from Prudhoe Bay. All you have to do is run a pipeline across to plug into the front of that. You’ll be able to generate perhaps as much as another million barrels a day U.S. production for U.S. market. We got it through the House, we couldn’t get it through the Senate. And it’s become a symbol of the battle between environmentalists and development, but I think again we come back to proposition long-term. We’ve got to do everything we can from the technological standpoint to develop and use other resources and to develop greater efficiencies with respect to how we use these materials to invest in things like hydrogen fuel cells and so forth, which the president does in significant ways in his budget.
But there’s probably no one silver bullet here, you’re going to have to build on several fronts in order to guarantee long-term that the United States has adequate supplies of affordable energy. But it’s a tough problem and we have to be willing as a nation to make some decisions if we want to address the problem not simply sweep it under the carpet and let somebody else worry about it. We think we’ve been doing that. So far we haven’t been able to get legislation passed to implement what we think would be a reasonable policy.
Jan Touney, managing editor of the QUAD-CITY TIMES: Mr. Vice President, in what ways will a second Bush/Cheney administration distinguish itself from the first?
Vice President Cheney: Well, I think, I look at the first term, and I think we’ve had considerable successes. I think if you look at education and the No Child Left Behind Act, I think was a major step forward for the country. Done on a bipartisan basis, the president’s first priority when he arrived in Washington, and Ted Kennedy supported it. We’d like to take that same basic set of principles and apply it now in high schools so that we have high standards of testing and accountability in the secondary level, just as we have now done in the lower grades.
I think the Medicare reform legislation was very important, and we don’t get nearly enough credit for that. Democrats ran for years on the basis that they were going to provide proscription drug benefits to seniors, and they never did. George Bush arrived in town, we got it done. And we’ve now got a Medicare drug discount card out there available to seniors that provides a 15 to 30 percent discount off of brand name drugs. Within about 15 months, 40 million seniors will be eligible for assistance from Medicare in terms of prescription drugs. It’s a very significant development going forward.
We’d like to do a lot more in the health care area, with respect to the future. We think medical liability reform is an important area to move in. A lot of places around the country are running into the consequences of the rising cost of malpractice insurance. That they are running the docs out of business or forcing them to practice preventive medicine, driving up the cost of health care on a regular basis. We want to go forward with association health plans which will allow our small businesses to come together to pool their assets, if you will, to get the same kind of discounts that big companies and corporations do.
We want to modernize our record-keeping in the whole health care area and move all of our paper records onto an electronic system. We think that would do wonders in terms of efficiencies as well as reducing the incidents, the accidents and mistakes in the whole health care area.
With respect to the domestic side, we obviously also want to go forward with making our tax cuts permanent. We think that’s important. The incentives that were built in as a result of the changes, we didn’t just cut taxes, we also changed things like tax on capital gains, on reducing the double taxation of dividends, eliminating the death tax on people that have built a business during their lifetime or a farm or a ranch, can pass it on to their kids without having to pay a taxes on it yet again. We think some of those changes are very important, too. If you look at sort of basic themes, the president wants to work as well on a bipartisan basis to pursue tax implication of tax reform. He talked about that in his acceptance speech in New York. We also need to address the Social Security problem, that Social Security is secure for the current generation of recipients, and probably the next generation of recipients. When we start to talk to the youngsters, and people in their 20s and 30s increasingly have doubts about whether or not it will be there, and there is going to be a major problem with Social Security down the road. And a way this can be addressed, and the direct way to do that, is to move in the direction of personal savings accounts that the president has talked about. We also think that the health savings accounts that we got through as part of the Medicare legislation offer significant protection that begins to change the way people think about health care and how we pay for health care. There was a great editorial this morning (Oct. 11) in the Wall Street Journal, if you haven’t seen it, about the president’s health proposal.
Internationally, I would hope that over the course of the second term, we’ll be able to complete the bulk of our work in Afghanistan and in Iraq. That we’ll be able to stand up democratically elected governments there and have them take over ever-increasing share of the responsibility for security. We think that’s important. I think it’s also important for us to move forward in many areas internationally to work with and to mobilize, if you will, other nations to get them actively and aggressively involved in the war on terror. We’ve done some of that already. I think there are still many out there, especially in the European area, who think that this is not their problem, that this is just a U.S. problem, and have not taken the time to really look carefully at everybody who has been hit.
The Russians got hit the other day. Of course, the Russians are not in Iraq. They didn’t send troops. They didn’t support us at the United Nations. They still were targeted. I think there is more work to be done to get the international community, if you will, sort of more fully and actively engaged in addressing the war on terror. On that basis, we will continue to push very hard as the president did this year when he addressed this question of Middle Eastern reform, we think that will be an important issue, as well, too. And because that probably long-term does more than just about anything else you can think of to alter circumstances in that part of the world, that has generated that kind of extremist Islamic ideology that seems to be at the bottom and one of the fundamental causes of the terrorists that we’re afflicted with now in the world. |
