08/13/2002
EDITORIAL NUMBER=0-10065

CHENEY ON TERRORISM WAR

The war against terrorism will not end with a treaty or by negotiating with terrorists. It will only end, said Vice President Dick Cheney, "in their complete and utter destruction."

The al-Qaida terrorist network has cells in sixty countries, including the United States. "Such a group," said Mr. Cheney, "cannot be held back by deterrence nor reasoned with by diplomats." Mr. Cheney said, "We still face an enemy determined to kill Americans by any means, on any scale, on our own soil."

Among the lethal means terrorists have tried to acquire are weapons of mass destruction. Mr. Cheney said, "In the rubble of Afghanistan we’ve found confirmation, if any were needed, that Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida network are seriously interested in nuclear and radiological weapons, and biological and chemical agents."

There is a grave danger that rogue nations possessing such weapons might put them in hands of terrorists. "In the case of [Iraq’s] Saddam Hussein," said Vice President Cheney, "we have a dictator who is clearly pursuing these capabilities and who has used them, both in his war against Iran and against his own people."

Threats against the U.S., said Mr. Cheney, require "the most careful, deliberate and decisive response.... There will be times of full and sustained combat action, as in Afghanistan last year. There will be other, quieter times, when success comes without need of military force. But at all times, at every turn," noted Mr. Cheney, we will press on."

The stakes could not be greater. As Vice President Dick Cheney put it, "Deliverable weapons of mass destruction in the hands of terrorists would expose this nation and the civilized world to the worst of horrors. And we will not allow it. We will not live at the mercy of terrorists or terror regimes."