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'We Send A Very Clear Message To All Groups That Operate By Means Of Terror And Violence': Press Conference by US Vice President Dick Cheney, April 9

'Remarks by the Vice President to the American Society of News Editors, The Fairmont Hotel, New Orleans, Louisiana, April 9, 2003'; The White House, Office of the Vice President.

Opening Remarks

Having been involved in planning and waging the Persian Gulf War in 1991 as Secretary of Defense, I think I can say with some authority that this campaign has displayed vastly improved capabilities, far better than we did a dozen years ago. In Desert Storm, only 20 percent of our air-to-ground fighters could guide a laser-guided bomb to target. Today, all of our air-to-ground fighters have that capability. In Desert Storm, it usually took up to two days for target planners to get a photo of a target, confirm its coordinates, plan the mission, and deliver it to the bomber crew. Now we have near real-time imaging of targets with photos and coordinates transmitted by e-mail to aircraft already in flight. In Desert Storm, battalion, brigade and division commanders had to rely on maps, grease pencils and radio reports to track the movements of our forces. Today our commanders have a real-time display of our own forces on their computer screens. In Desert Storm, we did not yet have the B-2. But that aircraft is now critical to our operations. And on a single bombing sortie, a B-2 can hit 16 separate targets, each with a 2,000-pound, precision-guided, satellite-based weapon.

The superior technology we now possess is, perhaps, the most obvious difference between the Gulf War and the present conflict. But there are many others. Desert Storm began with a 38-day air campaign, followed by a brief ground attack. In Operation Iraqi Freedom, the ground war began before the air war. In 1991, Saddam Hussein had time to set Kuwait's oil fields ablaze. In the current conflict, forces sent in early protected the 600 oil fields in southern Iraq, prevented an environmental catastrophe, and safeguarded a resource that's vital for the future of the people of Iraq. During Operation Desert Storm, Saddam managed to fire Scud missiles at Israel and Saudi Arabia. This time was different, again, thanks to Special Operations Forces, which seized control of the missile launch baskets in western Iraq, preventing their use by the enemy. Our Special Ops forces - joined by those of the British, the Australian, and the Polish allies - have played a vital role in the success of the current campaign.

During Operation Desert Storm, we faced a massive flow of refugees in need of aid and shelter. But so far, in Operation Iraqi Freedom, we've averted a large-scale humanitarian crisis. US and Royal Marines succeeded in taking the Al Faw Peninsula and cleared a path for humanitarian aid. And today, even as fighting continues, coalition forces are bringing food and water and medical supplies to liberated Iraqis.

Looking at the overall effort, Saddam Hussein apparently expected that this war would essentially be a replay of Desert Storm. And although he realized that some 250,000 Americans and coalition forces were stationed in the Gulf on the eve of the war, he seems to have assumed there was ample time to destroy the oil fields he had rigged to explode and the bridges that he had wired. But the tactics employed by General Franks were bold. They made the most of every technological advantage of our military, and they succeeded in taking the enemy by surprise.

Let me quote the military historian Victor Davis Hanson writing several days ago: "By any fair standard of even the most dazzling charges in military history, the Germans in the Ardennes in the Spring of 1940, or Patton's romp in July of 1944, the present race to Baghdad is unprecedented in its speed and daring, and in the lightness of its casualties." Hanson calls the campaign "historically unprecedented" and predicts that its "logistics will be studied for decades". Bottom line, with less than half of the ground forces and two-thirds of the air assets used 12 years ago in Desert Storm, Secretary Rumsfeld and General Franks have achieved a far more difficult objective.

Yet until this war is fully won, we cannot be overconfident in our position, and we must not underestimate the desperation of whatever forces remain loyal to the dictator. We know full well the nature of the enemy we are dealing with. Servants of the regime have used hospitals, schools and mosques for military operations. They have tortured and executed prisoners of war. They have forced women and children to serve as human shields. They have transported death squads in ambulances, fought in civilian clothes, feigned surrender and opened fire on our forces, and shot civilians who welcomed coalition troops.

In dealing with such an enemy, we must expect vicious tactics until the regime's final breath. The hardest combat could still be ahead of us. Only the outcome can be predicted with certainty: Iraq will be disarmed of its weapons of mass destruction; the regime will end; and the Iraqi people will be free.

In removing the terror regime from Iraq, we send a very clear message to all groups that operate by means of terror and violence against the innocent. The United States and our coalition partners are showing that we have the capacity and the will to wage war on terror - and to win decisively.

When I last spoke to this organization in 1990, the Cold War was ending, and I said then that we were looking at a new era in national security policy. Today, we are not just looking at a new era, we are actually living through it. The exact nature of the new dangers revealed themselves on September 11, 2001, with the murder of 3,000 innocent, unsuspecting men, women and children right here at home. The attack on our country forced us to come to grips with the possibility that the next time terrorists strike, they may well be armed with more than just plane tickets and box cutters. The next time they might direct chemical agents or diseases at our population, or attempt to detonate a nuclear weapon in one of our cities. These are not abstract matters to ponder - they are real dangers that we must guard against and confront before it's too late. From the training manuals and documents that we've seized in the war on terror, and from the interrogations we've conducted, we know the terrorists are determined to acquire weapons of mass destruction, and to use them against us. With September 11th as a fresh memory, no rational person can doubt that terrorists would use such weapons of mass murder the moment they are able to do so.

The government of the United States has a moral duty to confront those threats, and to do whatever it takes to defeat them. And as the leading power, we have a further responsibility to help keep the peace of the world and to prevent terrorists and their sponsors from plunging the world into horrific violence. President Bush takes that responsibility very seriously, and he is meeting it with great resolve and with clarity of purpose.

If we are to protect the American people and defend civilization against determined enemies, we cannot always rely on the old Cold War remedies of containment and deterrence. Containment does not work against a rogue state that possesses weapons of mass destruction and chooses to secretly deliver them to its terrorist allies. Deterrence does not work when we are dealing with terrorists who have no country to defend, who revel in violence, and who are willing to sacrifice their own lives in order to kill millions of others. To meet the unprecedented dangers posed by rogue states with weapons of mass destruction, and terrorist networks with global reach, our administration has taken urgent and, at times, unprecedented action.

One of these important things we have done is to strengthen the defense of the homeland. As the President requested, Congress created the Department of Homeland Security to mobilize against a wide range of potential threats. We have put more marshals on airplanes; stepped up security at airports, power plants, ports and border crossings. We have inoculated our troops against anthrax and smallpox and made the vaccines available for first responders, who are stockpiling enough smallpox vaccine for every American. We have proposed and urge Congress to pass Project BioShield - a comprehensive effort to develop and make available modern, effective drugs and treatments to counter a chemical or biological attack. And Project Bioshield is a critical element of defense in this new era.

But we know that playing defense isn't enough - we have to seize the offense against terrorists. So we are going after the terrorists, hunting them down, freezing their assets, disrupting their chain of command. We've had great successes recently with the capture of two key figures in the September 11th attacks - Ramzi Bin al-Shibh and Khalid Sheik Mohammed. And, of course, we still have forces on the ground in Afghanistan working with that country's government to rid it of the Taliban and al Qaeda elements.

Our war on terror continues on every front, from law enforcement, to intelligence, to military action. The President has made clear from the beginning that this will be a long and a focused effort - not only because the terrorists operate in the shadows, but also because they enjoy the backing of outlaw states. It is this alliance between terrorist networks seeking weapons of mass destruction and rogue states developing or already possessing these weapons that constitutes the gravest current threat to America's national security.

Therefore, a vital element of our strategy against terror must be to break the alliance between terrorist organizations and terrorist-sponsoring states. The chemical and biological weapons that Saddam Hussein is known to have produced are the very instruments that terrorists are seeking in order to inflict devastating harm on the people of this country, in Europe, and in the Middle East. That's why from the day the Gulf War ended in 1991, the United States has supported the efforts of the UN Security Council to disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction. And that is why the United States today is enforcing that demand. ...

The end of Saddam's regime will remove a source of violence and instability in a vital part of the world. A new regime in Iraq will also serve as a dramatic and inspiring example of freedom to other nations in the Middle East. ... The actions of our coalition now being taken in Iraq today have come at a cost. But the cost of inaction would have been far greater. And they would have been paid, not just by future generations, but very likely by our own, as well. ...

Questions and Answers

Question: You talked about the technological advantages we have in the war in Iraq. Could we talk a little bit about the psychological aspects of the war? Do you think, after this war, that we're going to have a difficult time making the case in the Arab world that we are there as liberators and not aggressors? And how do you think we're going to need to deal with the Arab leadership and the tremendous anger that's being portrayed and projected towards America as a result of this war?

Vice President Cheney: Well, I think there's no question but there's work to be done in that area. I've always found a little bit frustrating, all the years that I've been dealing with problems in that part of the world, going back now, I suppose, 20-some years, to find this criticism that's sometimes leveled at the United States based on our operations out there when I think the record of the United States over the years may not be perfect, but we have gone to war now on a number of occasions, frankly, to protect Muslims, to role back Saddam Hussein's aggression in Kuwait in 1990 and '91, in the Balkans, in Bosnia, and elsewhere. In this case, we were, after great provocation and after 12 years of unsuccessful efforts by the UN, acting to eliminate one of the most brutal dictators of our time. A man who probably was responsible for the death of at least a million Muslims, half of them his own people. A man who ran a horrific police state. And I see that, and I see the outpouring of joy in the streets of Baghdad today by the Iraqi people at their liberation, and still the US is subject to criticism from our friends in the region. And I think we need to do everything we can, partly to tell our side of the story. I think most people who live in that part of the world don't have access to free media, and I think it would be an improvement if they did. There's clearly more work that needs to be done in that area by us. But I think, in the final analysis, history will judge us, and hopefully, the people of the region will judge us based upon what happens next in Iraq, in how we conduct ourselves going forward, in whether or not we keep the commitment we made - which we definitely will keep just as quickly as possible, to establish a viable representative, democratic government in Iraq, and to withdraw our forces just as quickly as we can. We are not there as occupiers. We have no interest in the oil. We have no interest in maintaining forces there a minute longer than is necessary. And I think when they see how we function, how rapidly we move in that direction, whether or not we keep the commitments we made, hopefully they'll come to judge that what we've done here was, in fact, necessary and appropriate to the circumstances, and that the people of Iraq are far better off for our having eliminated this horrific regime than they were if we had not acted.

Question: We know you have a plan to reorganize and rebuild Iraq. You, along with the President and the coalition. Could we hope that you also have a precise plan to give France and Germany a role in Iraq that is consistent with their pre-war behavior? ...

Vice President Cheney: ... Let me say a word about the problem we encountered. Obviously, I think we're disappointed, most Americans are, at the fact that nations that have historically been close friends and allies of the United States, in this particular case, did everything they could to stop us from doing what we thought was essential, from the standpoint of our own national security, as well as the - our friends in the region. The President made a very deliberate decision last fall to go to the United Nations to sort of give Saddam Hussein one more chance to come clean, but also to try to restore the UN Security Council process to a position of competence and integrity at dealing with these kinds of international problems. There are likely to be other problems like this in the future that we'll have to deal with. And if the international community can come together effectively, obviously, that's preferable. In this particular case, that didn't happen. And the French and the Germans, in particular, did everything they could to prevent us from going forward and enforcing the UN Security Council resolutions. They seemed to be less interested in solving the problem than they did in restraining the United States from taking action. That's history, that's behind us now. It's time for us to get on with business and do what we set out to do in Iraq originally. I think the preeminent effort at this point, obviously, is going to be led by the United States and our coalition partners - by the Brits, the Australians, the Poles and a great many other nations that have supported this effort. They've already demonstrated their willingness to be part of an effort to deal with this problem and I think we can expect them to step up and conduct themselves in the fashion that is reflective of the commitment they've already made. With respect to others who didn't support the effort, perhaps time will help in terms of improve their outlook. I think once they see the results of our efforts, that they'll be interested in trying to help at least on the humanitarian side. And that's appropriate. There's this debate raging over the United Nations, what kind of role should the UN have in Iraq. I think the UN has a prominent role to play. They do great things with respect to refugee assistance and coordinating the work of the non-governmental organizations and charitable organizations that are very valuable in this kind of setting. But the key role, going forward, has to be - especially as long as there's a security threat, which there's likely to be for some considerable period of time - has to reside with the US government. And our plan that we've talked about and that we will carry through on is just as quickly as possible to stand up an Iraqi interim authority, run by Iraqis, selected by Iraqis, that is both building the government of the future in Iraq, as well as administering the nation today. And we'll pass responsibilities off at - just as quickly as possible. We don't believe that the United Nations is equipped to play that central role. They'll play a very important role, but I think the central role needs to still reside with the coalition until such time as we can pass it to the Iraqi people, themselves. And, hopefully, that process will begin within a matter of days. So we'll continue to work with our friends and allies. I guess I - I look at Europe, and it's important for us to remember that there are a large number of European nations that stepped up and supported us in this enterprise, and we shouldn't forget that. We appreciate very much the support we got from them. And hopefully, should similar problems arise in the future, maybe our French and German friends will reconsider their position. ...

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