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Skriven 2006-08-15 23:31:16 av Whitehouse Press (1:3634/12.0)
Ärende: Press Release (0608152) for Tue, 2006 Aug 15
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Vice President's Remarks at a Luncheon for Arizona Victory 2006
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For Immediate Release
Office of the Vice President
August 15, 2006

Vice President's Remarks at a Luncheon for Arizona Victory 2006
Arizona Biltmore Resort and Spa
Phoenix, Arizona



12:25 P.M. MST

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, thank you very much, Matt and Jon. It's a
pleasure to be here today, and I appreciate your kind invitation. Great to
be joined also by Congressman Hayworth and Congressman Franks. It's great
to see all of you. And I just came from our place in Wyoming, in Jackson
Hole. I'm probably in that rare, exotic category of people who would leave
Jackson Hole and go to Phoenix in the middle of August. (Laughter.) But I'm
delighted to be here. And I bring good wishes to all of you from our
President, George W. Bush. (Applause.)

I've been to Arizona many times over the years, and the President and I
have many friends all across this great state. We also have some tremendous
memories, coming to Arizona during the last two national campaigns. We
worked hard, as did many of you. And Arizona came through both times. And
in 2004, you gave the Bush-Cheney ticket a ten-point victory, and the most
votes ever cast for a presidential ticket in this state.

We also appreciate the very distinguished tradition of leadership here in
Arizona. Over the years I've been privileged to know Arizona statesmen like
Barry Goldwater, John Rhodes, Bob Stump. And now, of course, I have the
great privilege of working with your Republican delegation in Congress --
J.D. and Trent, joined by Representatives Jeff Flake and Jim Kolbe, John
Shadegg, Rick -- and, of course, Jon Kyl and John McCain. You've got an
outstanding delegation in the United States Congress representing the state
of Arizona.

I want to thank all of you for the strong support you're giving to the
Republican Party, and to the victory effort that we're mounting here in
Arizona. We're headed into the fall campaign, with a lot of important
offices on the ballot. We have a good roster of candidates, and we need to
make sure they have the resources they're going to need in order to
guarantee victory in November. A strong turnout on Election Day will be
good for our party, good for Arizona, and good for the country. And in the
weeks ahead, we need to make sure that our fellow citizens know about our
agenda for extending the prosperity of the country, and for protecting
America against those who wish to harm us.

The last five-and-a-half years have been marked by a series of
unprecedented challenges for the United States. We've experienced war,
national emergency, economic recession, corporate scandals, and historic
natural disasters. Yet we've faced up to those challenges, and in the
process we've shown our many strengths as a people. Ronald Reagan once
described Americans this way: He said, "We, as a people, aren't happy if we
are not moving forward. A nation that is growing and thriving is one that
will solve its problems. We must offer progress instead of stagnation; the
truth instead of promises; and hope and faith instead of defeatism and
despair."

If Ronald Reagan were with us now, he would be proud of this country, and I
believe he'd be proud of the man who lives in the White House today. With
George Bush as our leader, the U.S. is moving forward with confidence and
with hope. We have no fear of the future, because we intend to shape it.

As Republicans we share a philosophy of how to strengthen the nation's
economy. We believe the true role of government in a free society is to
create an environment that gives consumers the confidence to spend, savers
the confidence to save, and entrepreneurs the confidence to invest in their
businesses, to expanded their businesses and to hire new employees. One of
the surest ways to create that climate is to limit the growth of government
and to leave as many resources as possible in the hands of the people
themselves.

That's how we've operated these past five-and-a-half years. And the results
of our pro-growth agenda have been extraordinary. Last year growth in
America outpaced every other major industrialized nation in the world.
Since August of '03, we've added more than 5.5 million new jobs. The
national unemployment rate is 4.8 percent -- lower than the average of the
1970s, the 1980s or the 1990s. Productivity is strong. Household net worth
is at an all-time high.

The current expansion is also translating into much higher than projected
federal revenues. Recently the President announced that a projected deficit
of $423 billion has dropped to $296 billion in just 12 months. There is no
mystery to this. Over the last several generations, we've had three major
tax cuts in this country -- in the 1960s under President Kennedy, in the
1980s under President Reagan, and now under President Bush. All three were
followed by periods of sustained economic growth, more jobs, and greater
wealth creation across the country. The evidence is in -- the best tax
policy for America is found in the wisdom of Kennedy, Reagan and Bush.
(Applause.)

Even as revenue grows, we have a responsibility to be good stewards of the
taxpayers' money. Government has a duty to spend taxpayer dollars wisely,
or not spend them at all. To meet that responsibility, the President signed
into law the Deficit Reduction Act. In the Senate, Jon Kyl and John McCain
both voted yes -- and I got to pitch in, as well, by casting a tie-breaking
vote. The great thing about it is that every time I get to vote, our side
wins. (Laughter.)

We have a full agenda for the rest of 2006 and beyond, and President Bush
understands that every decision he makes will affect the lives of millions
of Americans for many years into the future. He's going to lead the effort
on immigration reform, to make the system rational, to make sure that we
have control of our borders. And he will continue to appoint solid judges
like Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Sam Alito to the Supreme Court.
(Applause.)

Above all, we're going to remember our number one responsibility: to
protect the American people, and to support the men and women who defend us
in a time of war. There is still hard work ahead in the war on terror, and
the central front of this war today is in Iraq. We can expect further acts
of violence and destruction by the enemies of freedom. But progress has
been steady. Iraqis have ratified a progressive, democratic constitution
and voted in huge numbers to elect new leaders under that constitution. Our
coalition is also helping to build an Iraqi security force that is trained
and equipped. And the Iraqi forces are showing bravery and skill in the
defense of their country's freedom. Last month Prime Minister Maliki came
to Washington and thanked the United States and the American people. He
pledged to fight terror and asked America to continue helping his country.
He and his people can be certain that the United States of America will not
give up the fight on terror, and will not turn our backs on a new
democracy.

There's a vigorous debate taking place right now about the way forward in
Iraq. A number of well-known Democrats have been talking about setting a
deadline for withdrawal. That's a bad idea. Americans and our Iraqi allies
need to know that decisions about troop levels will be driven by conditions
on the ground and the judgments of our military commanders -- not by
artificial timelines set by politicians in Washington, D.C.

Another bad idea comes from my old friend Congressman Jack Murtha. Jack was
the Chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee when I was
Secretary of Defense, and we used to do a lot of business together. He's
suggested now that we can deal with the Iraqi situation by redeploying our
forces to Okinawa. The Pacific Ocean is a long way from the Persian Gulf,
but the most troubling aspect of Jack's proposal is this: He cited two
previous instances of American withdrawal, and suggested they would be good
models for us to follow now in Iraq. The first was America's exit from
Beirut in 1983, and the second, our withdrawal from Somalia in 1993.

That proposal is contrary to the national interest -- and it draws exactly
the wrong lessons from the examples of Beirut and Somalia. If you look back
at the years before 9/11, you will see case after case of terrorists
hitting America, and of America failing to respond hard enough.

In Beirut, terrorists, of course, killed 241 of our servicemen with a
suicide truck bomber. In Somalia we lost 19 Americans in Mogadishu. In both
cases, the United States responded to those attacks by withdrawing our
forces. But by doing so, we simply invited more danger, because the
terrorists concluded that if they killed enough Americans, they could
change American policy -- because they had. And so they continued to wage
attacks against America and American interests.

We had the bombing at the World Trade Center in New York in 1993; the
murders at the Saudi National Guard training facility in Riyadh in 1995;
the attack on Khobar Towers in 1996; or the simultaneous attack on two of
our embassies in East Africa in 1998; and, of course, the bombing of the
USS Cole in 2000. Ultimately, all of this culminated in the attacks right
here at home on 9/11, which killed 3,000 of our fellow citizens.

If we follow Congressman Murtha's advice and withdraw from Iraq the same
way we withdrew from Beirut in 1983 or Mogadishu in 1993, we will simply
validate the al Qaeda strategy and invite more terrorist attacks in the
future.

In the decade prior to 9/11, we spent more than $2 trillion on our national
security, and yet we lost nearly 3,000 Americans at the hands of 19 men
armed with airline tickets and box cutters. In the case of al Qaeda we are
not dealing with large armies that 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 countries, blend in among the
innocent, and to kill without mercy or without restraint. They have
intelligence and counterintelligence operations of their own. They are
using the most sophisticated communications technology they can get their
hands on.

In pursuit of their objectives, they have carried out a number of attacks
since 9/11 -- in Casablanca, Jakarta, Mombassa, Bali, Riyadh, Baghdad,
Istanbul, Madrid, London, Sharm al-Sheikh, Bombay and elsewhere. Here in
the U.S., we have not had another 9/11. No one can guarantee that we won't
be hit again. But the relative safety of recent years was not an accident.
It's because we've waged an effort on every front -- diplomacy, finance,
intelligence, homeland security, and, when necessary, military action. And
we must not let up for a moment. Last week's arrests in the U.K. remind us
that the threat is still very real, that our enemies will not cease in
their attempts to kill innocent Americans.

It is critically important to remember that this nation is fighting a war.
And I am concerned there may be a tendency in some quarters to discount the
threat, to relax our guard, and to forget the true nature of the struggle
we're involved in. After 9/11, President Bush told Congress and the country
that this would be a different kind of war. He said we "should not expect
one battle, but rather a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we've ever
seen." This war may, he said, "include dramatic strikes, visible on
television and covert operations, secret even in success."

That's exactly how this fight has played out, and there's still a lot to
do, because we face ruthless and determined enemies. And as we make our
case to the voters in this election year, it's vital to keep issues of
national security at the top of our agenda. The President and I welcome the
discussion, because every voter in America needs to know where we stand, as
well as how the leaders of the Democratic Party view the war on terror.
Their floor leader in the Senate, Harry Reid, boasted publicly of his
efforts to kill the Patriot Act. The Chairman of the Democratic Party,
Howard Dean, said the capture of Saddam Hussein would not make America any
safer. And now Mr. Dean's party has turned its back on Senator Joe
Lieberman.

Senator Lieberman was my opponent in 2000 -- Al Gore's running mate, a
longtime senator, and one of the most loyal and distinguished Democrats of
his generation. Joe is also an unapologetic supporter of the fight against
terror. He voted to support military action in Iraq when most other
senators in both parties did the same -- and he's had the courage to stick
by that vote even when things get tough. And now, for that reason alone,
the Dean Democrats have defeated Joe Lieberman. Their choice, instead, is a
candidate whose explicit goal is to give up the fight against the
terrorists in Iraq -- never mind that Iraq is a fellow democracy; never
mind that the Iraqi people and their elected leaders are counting on us.
What these Democrats are pushing now is the very kind of retreat that has
been tried in the past. It is contrary to our values, it would betray our
friends, and it would only heighten the danger to the United States. So the
choice before the American people is becoming clearer every day. For the
sake of our security, this nation must reject any strategy of resignation
and defeatism in the face of determined enemies. (Applause.)

We have to face the simple truth. The enemies that struck America are
weakened and fractured, but they are still lethal and still desperately
trying to hit us again. We have a duty to act against them as swiftly and
effectively as we possibly can. Either we are serious about fighting this
war or we are not. And with George W. Bush leading this nation, we are
serious, and we will not let down our guard. (Applause.)

Ladies and gentlemen, in these five-and-a-half years we've been through a
great deal as a nation. Yet with each test, the American people have
displayed the true character of our country. We have built for ourselves an
economy and a standard of living that are the envy of the world. We've
faced dangers with resolve. And we have been defended by some of the
bravest men and women this nation has ever produced. (Applause.)

When future generations look back on our time, they will know that we met
our moment with courage and with clear thinking. And they will know that
America became a better nation -- stronger, more prosperous, and more
secure -- under the leadership of our President, George W. Bush.

I want to thank all of you for supporting the Arizona Republican Party in
this critical time. I want to thank you for supporting the tremendous
office holders that are with us today and whose names are on the ballot
this year. They do a superb job for all of us. Now it's on to victory in
November. Thank you very much. (Applause.)

END 12:43 P.M. MST

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