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Skriven 2006-05-26 23:34:54 av Whitehouse Press (1:3634/12.0)
Ärende: Press Release (0605264) for Fri, 2006 May 26
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Vice President Delivers Commencement Address at the United States Naval
Academy
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For Immediate Release
Office of the Vice President
May 26, 2006

Vice President Delivers Commencement Address at the United States Naval
Academy
Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium
Annapolis, Maryland


˙˙˙˙˙ Photo Essay: U.S. Naval Academy Graduation

10:16 A.M. EDT

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Thank you. (Applause.) Thank you very much. Secretary
Winter, Admiral Mullen, Admiral Rempt, General Magnus, Dean Miller, Captain
Grooms, Mayor Moyer, Academy staff and faculty -- distinguished guests,
officers, midshipmen, alumni, and graduates:

Thank you for the warm welcome today, and for the privilege of standing
before the newest officers of the United States Navy and Marine Corps. I'm
looking at a group of men and women who have brought academic and athletic
distinction to the Naval Academy; and who, in just a few moments, will
accept commissions to God and country. I commend each one of you for this
achievement, and for the years of hard effort that brought you to this day.
And I am honored to extend the personal congratulations of your
Commander-in-Chief, President George W. Bush. (Applause.)

It is always an honor to visit this Academy, which has prepared so many
splendid officers down through the generations. Of the six current members
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, four, including the Chairman, are graduates
of this Academy. (Applause.) The nation is exceedingly well served by the
Naval Academy alumni, and we are grateful for the superior standards that
are upheld on this campus each and every day.

Those of you graduating today will carry your own special memories of the
place, and of the formative events during your time as midshipmen. I should
point out that in these four years you've worked very diligently. You've
been good citizens. You've helped out in disaster areas; volunteered for
charities; and served as mentors to young people. You've shown
extraordinary generosity of spirit. And you beat Army four times in a row.
(Applause.)

As I learned about this class, I was naturally interested, as a resident of
Wyoming, in how many graduates happen to come from my home state.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Cheers.) (Laughter.)

THE VICE PRESIDENT: That's one of them. (Laughter.) Actually, I found out
there are two in this class -- one from Gillette and one from Rock Springs.

AUDIENCE MEMBERS: (Cheers.)

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I would have expected more, considering Wyoming's
maritime traditions and the breadth of our coastline. (Laughter.) But I
will remind Midshipmen McFarrin and Rawson -- (applause) -- of the motto I
used to have when I was the lone congressman from Wyoming: It may be a
small delegation, but it's all quality. (Laughter and applause.)

As members of the brigade gather in tribute to the class of 2006, I want
you to know about a small matter the President and I discussed before I
came over to Annapolis today. We realize the academic year may be over, but
there are still some midshipmen on restriction for minor conduct offenses.
We talked about it. The President took the view that we should be lenient.
Me, I could have gone either way. (Laughter.) But he's the boss. So at his
direction, and in accordance with tradition, I hereby absolve the
midshipmen on restriction for minor conduct offenses. (Applause.)

All of you today are feeling a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction --
and rightly so. Four years ago, you entered one of the most rigorous
leadership programs in the world, and you have been found worthy. But your
path to leadership began long before Induction Day. In your lifetime you
have had the encouragement and support of the people who know you best, who
care about you the most, and who keep you in their prayers. This is a great
moment for them, as well. So let's give a round of applause to the parents
and family of the class of 2006. (Applause.)

In a world that depends on American sea power to swiftly deliver
humanitarian aid and disaster relief, to secure the sea lanes, and to carry
out combat operations, we'll be counting on all of you. And you are well
prepared for the tasks ahead. We know where the aviators are headed --
you'll be on fixed wing or helicopter assignments. We know where the
Marines will be -- in the air, on the ground, or in support of combat
operations. And we know where the surface officers will be -- on an Arleigh
Burke-class destroyer, or perhaps serving as diplomats in places around the
globe, such as Japan or Bahrain. Special forces: you'll be at the tip of
the spear, worldwide. And submariners: we don't know where you'll be --
(laughter) --but we're glad you're there -- (laughter) -- as part of our
strategic forces. (Applause.)

To any place that duty takes you -- whether on the bridge of a ship or at
the controls of a jet or a submarine -- you will arrive with the knowledge
and the tools to excel. At the Naval Academy you've been tested -- morally,
mentally, and physically. You have shown yourselves to be men and women of
agility, endurance, and, above all, honor. And each one of you is a superb
addition to the quality force that America has continued to build over
these past five years.

You are the first class to enter the Academy following the attacks of 9/11.
And I'm guessing that more than a few of you were inspired to military
service by that attack on our country. In these four years, the war on
terror has influenced the course of study at our service academies, and it
will define much of your career leading American sailors and Marines.

To prevail in this fight, we must understand the nature of the enemy that
threatens America and the civilized world. It is as brutal and heartless as
any we have ever faced. This enemy wears no uniform, has no regard for the
rules of warfare, and is unconstrained by any standard of decency or
morality. They plot and plan in secret, target the defenseless, and rejoice
at the death of innocent, unsuspecting human beings.

This enemy has a set of beliefs -- and we saw the expression of those
beliefs in the rule of the Taliban. They seek to impose a dictatorship of
fear, under which every man, woman, and child lives in total obedience to a
narrow and hateful ideology. This ideology rejects tolerance, denies
freedom of conscience, and demands that women be pushed to the margins of
society. Such beliefs can be imposed only through force and intimidation,
so those who refuse to bow to the tyrants will be brutalized or killed --
and no person or group is exempt.

This enemy also has a clear set of objectives. The terrorists want to end
all American and Western influence in the Middle East. Their goal in that
region is to seize control of a country, so they have a base from which to
launch attacks and wage war against governments that do not meet their
demands. The terrorists believe that by controlling one country, they will
be able to target and overthrow other governments in the region, ultimately
to establish a totalitarian empire that encompasses a region from Spain,
across North Africa, through the Middle East and South Asia, all the way to
Indonesia. They have made clear, as well, their ultimate ambitions: to arm
themselves with chemical, biological or even nuclear weapons; to destroy
Israel; to intimidate all Western countries; and to cause mass death here
in the United States. Some might look at these ambitions and wave them off
as extreme and mad. Well, these ambitions are extreme and mad. They are
also real, and we must not wave them off. We must take them seriously. We
must oppose them. And we must defeat them. (Applause.)

Over the last several decades, Americans have seen how the terrorists
pursue their objectives. To put it in very basic terms, they would hit us,
and we would not hit back hard enough. For many years prior to 9/11, we
treated terror attacks against Americans as isolated incidents, and
answered -- if at all -- on an ad hoc basis, and never in a systematic way.
Even after a strike inside our own country -- the 1993 attack on the World
Trade Center in New York -- there was a tendency to treat terrorist attacks
as individual criminal acts, to be handled primarily as a matter for law
enforcement. The man who perpetrated that first attack in New York was
tracked down, arrested, convicted, and sent off to spend the rest of his
life in prison. Yet behind that one man was a growing network with
operatives inside and outside the United States, waging war against our
country. For us, that war started on 9/11. For them, it started years
before. After the World Trade Center attack in 1993 came the murders at the
Saudi Arabian National Guard facility in 1995; the attack on Khobar Towers
in 1996; the simultaneous bombings of our embassies Tanzania and Kenya in
1998; and the attack on the USS Cole in 2000. With each attack, the
terrorists grew more confident in believing they could strike America
without paying a price and believing that if they killed enough Americans,
they could change our policy. So they continued to wage those attacks --
making the world less safe and eventually striking us here in the homeland
on September 11th and killing 3,000 of our fellow citizens.

Against this kind of determined, organized, ruthless enemy, America
required a new strategy -- not merely to prosecute a series of crimes, but
to fight and win a global campaign against the terror network.

First, we are absolutely determined to prevent attacks before they occur,
and so we are on the offensive against the terror networks. At home and
with coalition partners abroad, we have broken up terror cells, tracked
down terrorist operatives, and put pressure on their ability to organize
and plan attacks. The work is difficult and often perilous, and there is
much yet to do. But we have made tremendous progress against this enemy
that dwells in the shadows.

Second, we are determined to deny safe haven to the terrorists. Since the
day our country was attacked, we have applied the Bush Doctrine: Any person
or government that supports, protects, or harbors terrorists is complicit
in the murder of the innocent and will be held to account.

Third, we are working to halt the proliferation of weapons of mass
destruction, and to keep those weapons out of the hands of killers. In the
post-9/11 world, we have had to confront such dangers before they
materialize. The President put it very well: "Terrorists and terror states
do not reveal these threats with fair notice, in formal declarations -- and
responding to such enemies only after they have struck first is not
self--defense, it's suicide."

Fourth, we are determined to deny the terrorists control of any nation,
which they would use as a home base and a staging ground for terrorist
attacks on others. That is why we continue to fight Taliban remnants and al
Qaeda forces in Afghanistan. That is why we are working with President
Musharraf to oppose and isolate the terrorist element in Pakistan. And that
is why we are fighting the remnants of Saddam Hussein's regime and the
terrorists in Iraq.

Because our coalition has stood by our commitment to the Afghan and Iraqi
peoples, some 50 million men, women, and children who lived under dictators
now live in freedom. Afghanistan is a rising democracy, with the first
fully elected government in its 5,000-year history. Iraq has the most
progressive constitution and the strongest democratic mandate in the Arab
world. And despite threats from assassins and car-bombers, Iraqis came
forward by the millions to cast their votes and to proclaim their rights as
citizens of a free country. Now they live under an elected government
committed to serving all Iraqis, determined to speed up the day when Iraqi
forces can assume full responsibility for their nation's security. We will
help them on this journey because we are a nation that keeps its word. And
we know that when men and women are given the power to determine their own
destiny, the ideologies of violence and resentment will lose their appeal,
and nations will turn their energies to the pursuit of peace.

By standing with our friends, and making a better day possible in the
broader Middle East; by supporting democracy, we serve both ideals and the
security of our nation. And the brave Americans on duty in this war can be
proud of their service for the rest of their lives. (Applause.)

In an enterprise as vast as the war on terror, victory requires that we use
every element of our national power. The terrorists view the entire world
as a battlefield. And those of us in positions of responsibility must do
everything we can to figure out the intentions of an enemy that likely has
combatants inside the United States today. We live in a free and open
society, and the terrorists want to use those very advantages against us.
And so we have an urgent duty to learn who they are, what they are doing,
and to stop them before they act.

For this reason, in the aftermath of 9/11 President Bush authorized the
National Security Agency to intercept a certain category of
terrorist-linked international communications. The purpose is very simple
to state: If people inside the United States are communicating with al
Qaeda, they are talking to the enemy -- and we need to know about it.
(Applause.)

The Terrorist Surveillance Program is highly classified and carefully
limited. The program was improperly revealed to the news media, some of
which now describe it as domestic surveillance. That is not the case. We
are talking about international communications, one end of which we have
reason to believe is related to al Qaeda or to terrorist networks. It's
hard to think of any category of information that could be more important
to the safety of the United States.

The Terrorist Surveillance Program is fully consistent with the
constitutional responsibilities and the legal authorities of the President.
And the program is conducted in a manner that fully protects the civil
liberties of the American people. The President has made clear --
(applause) -- the President has made clear from the outset, both publicly
and privately, that our duty to uphold the law of the land admits no
exceptions in wartime. As he has said, "We are in a fight for our
principles, and our first responsibility is to live by them."

In addition, the entire program is reconsidered and reauthorized by the
President himself every 45 days. He has reauthorized it more than 30 times
since September 11th because our nation faces a continuing threat from al
Qaeda and related organizations. Key members of Congress, from both
political parties, have received more than a dozen briefings on the
Terrorist Surveillance Program. The reason I know this is that I'm the one
who presided over most of those briefings.

Above all, I can tell you that the Terrorist Surveillance Program is
absolutely essential to the security of the United States. If you'll
recall, the 9/11 Commission focused criticism on the nation's inability to
uncover links between terrorists at home and terrorists overseas. The term
that's used is "connecting the dots" -- and the fact is that one small
piece of data might very well make it possible to save thousands of lives.
And the very important question today is whether or not we've learned all
the lessons of September 11th.

In the decade prior to 9/11, this country spent more than $2 trillion
dollars on national security. Yet we lost nearly 3,000 Americans at the
hands of 19 men with box cutters and plane tickets. In the case of al Qaeda
we are not dealing with large armies we can track, or uniforms we can see,
or men with territory of their own to defend. Their preferred tactic, which
they boldly proclaim, is to slip into this country, blend in among the
innocent, kill without mercy and without restraint. They have intelligence
and counterintelligence operations of their own. They take their orders
from overseas. They are using the most sophisticated communications
technology they can get their hands on. Since 9/11 they have successfully
carried out attacks in Casablanca, Jakarta, Mombassa, Bali, Riyadh,
Baghdad, Istanbul, Madrid, London, Sharm al-Sheikh and elsewhere. Here in
the U.S., we have not had another 9/11. But while the enemies that struck
us may be weakened and fractured, they are still lethal and still
desperately trying to hit us again. They hate us, they hate our country,
and they hate the liberties for which we stand. They have contempt for our
values. They doubt our strength. And they believe that America will lose
our nerve and let down our guard.

We're all grateful that this nation has not had another day like September
11th. Obviously, no one can guarantee that we won't be hit again. But the
relative safety of these years did not come about by accident. We've been
protected by sensible policy decisions, by decisive action at home and
abroad, and by round-the-clock efforts on the part of people in the armed
services, law enforcement, intelligence, and homeland security.

Every day the President of the United States makes decisions based on the
intelligence briefing he received that morning. The information in that
briefing is critical to assessing risks, and to allocating security assets
inside the homeland and far beyond. Throughout our military, intelligence
has a daily, indeed hourly, influence on the movement of ships and subs,
fighter and bomber missions, and orders given to those commands at the tip
of the spear. Gathering the best information, and getting it into the hands
of the war fighter, means that your work is more effective, your maneuvers
are more safe, and the nation you serve is more secure.

As you ready yourselves for new responsibilities, I want each one of you to
know that the President will not relent in the effort to track the enemies
of the United States with every legitimate tool in his command. (Applause.)
This is not a war we can win on the defensive. Our only option against
these enemies is to monitor them, to find them, to fight them, and to
destroy them. (Applause.)

The class of 2006 has adopted the motto, Custodus Liberatus -- Custodians
of Liberty. Ladies and gentlemen, I lack the words to fully express how
much you mean to this nation -- not just on commissioning day, but every
day that you give to America. We look at you and we see the best that is in
our country. In your careers you will serve in a fleet like none other that
has ever sailed before. You are part of a Navy and Marine Corps that uphold
the noblest of traditions. You serve under a flag that stands for freedom,
and human rights, and stability in a turbulent world.

As of today, you, the Custodians of Liberty, will begin writing your own
chapter of excellence and achievement for the United States Armed Forces.
(Applause.) As military officers you will bring relief to the helpless,
hope to the oppressed. You will protect the United States of America in a
time of war, and you'll help to build the peace that freedom brings.

Four years ago you arrived at Annapolis with a sense of all that you could
become. You have grown in knowledge and in character. You have earned the
rank and the respect that are yours today. You were selected with care, and
you are sent forth with high expectations, the hopes, and the prayers of
the greatest nation on Earth.

Good luck and Godspeed to the U.S. Naval Academy Class of 2006. (Applause.)

END 10:40 A.M. EDT

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