Cheney in Latest Time: "We Inherited" 9/11

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Sun Oct-22-06 04:37 AM
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Cheney in Latest Time: "We Inherited" 9/11

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1548061,00.html

Nation

Exclusive Interview: Cheney on Elections and Iraq
The Vice President talks to TIME about why he thinks the G.O.P. will maintain control of both the House and Senate, and admits he may have been "premature" in saying "we were over the hump in terms of violence" in Iraq
By MIKE ALLEN AND JAMES CARNEY/WASHINGTON

- snip -

TIME: Mr. Vice President, while you cited the economic record ... history will probably judge on its international accomplishments. How do you think -- or how would you like -- history to judge this presidency or this administration?

Cheney: Well, I think -- my guess is that the judgment will be very favorable. And I say that primarily because of what we've had to deal with, the fact that we inherited a situation, obviously, where the -- all the planning and preparation for 9/11 was underway, and then 9/11 itself sort of, in effect, has shaped the context within which we've governed. It has been -- 9/11 and the aftermath have really been sort of the dominate feature of the landscape, if you will, that we've had to steer our way through during the course of this administration. And I put that within the broader context of the global war on terror.

We went from a situation where in the '90s I think generally terrorist attacks were looked upon as law enforcement problems. And what 9/11 brought home to everybody was, in fact, we were at war. Our adversaries knew it before we did. They declared war on us back in the '90s, but the U.S. didn't really respond on a strategic level until after 9/11.

And with 9/11, we have been very aggressive in terms of both carrying the fight to the enemy, going after the terrorists, going after the state sponsors of terror, going after those who could conceivably equip the terrorists with deadlier technologies than they've used before. The ultimate threat here isn't 19 guys armed with airliners; it's 19 guys in the middle of one of our cities with a nuclear weapon. That's the ultimate threat we have to deal with these days. And all of that was brought home by 9/11.

I think it also needs to be evaluated in terms of what's happened here at home, and the fact that we have now for more than five years successfully prevented another attack on the homeland. But nobody can promise there won't be another one. It's not that kind of proposition. But there is no question but I think any objective observer will look at it and say, on 9/11 we lost 3,000 people to 19 guys who had box cutters and airline tickets and obviously took us by surprise, took the nation by surprise, demonstrated our vulnerability, if you will.

But since then, in spite the fact that there have been attacks around the world, and that there have been numerous attempts here to mount attacks against the United States, through the measures we've taken -- the Terrorist Surveillance Program, the Patriot Act, the detainee program that we run through the CIA -- all of those things have allowed us to successfully fend off any further attack against the homeland. That's a remarkable achievement.

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Cheney in Latest Time: "We Inherited" 9/11

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