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After 9/11 We Were Prepared To Use Military Force. We Were Prepared To Go After Not Only The Terrorists, But Those Who Sponsor Terror And Provide Sanctuary And Safe Harbor For Them. We Were Prepared To Use Our Intelligence Assets The Way We Would Against An Enemy That Threatened The United States Itself, To Put In Place, For Example, Things Like The Terror Surveillance Program And To Have A Robust Interrogation Program On Detainees. Those Are The Acts You Take When You Feel You're At War And That The Very Existence Of The Nation Is Threatened.

-Dick Cheney

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After 9/11 We Were

Dick Cheney

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After 9/11 We Were Prepared To Use Military Force. We Were Prepared To Go After Not Only The Terrorists, But Those Who Sponsor Terror And Provide Sanctuary And Safe Harbor For Them. We Were Prepared To Use Our Intelligence Assets The Way We Would Against An Enemy That Threatened The United States Itself, To Put In Place, For Example, Things Like The Terror Surveillance Program And To Have A Robust Interrogation Program On Detainees. Those Are The Acts You Take When You Feel You're At War And That The Very Existence Of The Nation Is Threatened.

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I've Worked For Four Presidents And Watched Two Others Up Close, And I Know That There's No Such Thing As A Routine Day In The Oval Office.

It's Awfully Hard To Convey A Sense Of Credibility To Allies When You [the Congress] Voted For The War And Then You Declared: Wrong War, Wrong Place, Wrong Time.

I Do Not Believe The President Requires Any Additional Authorization From The Congress Before Committing Us Forces To Achieve Our Objectives In The Gulf.

I'm Up In The Senate Most Tuesdays When They're In Session.

Direct Threats Require Decisive Action.

Decisive Action

Westerners Know The Difference Between A Talker And The Real Deal. If Rick Perry Wasn't Right To Be Governor Of Texas, Why Should He Be President?

Senator Kerry Says He Sees Two Americas. It Makes The Whole Thing Mutual - America Sees Two John Kerrys.

Two Days Ahead Of Schedule, The World Witnessed The Arrival Of A Free And Sovereign Iraq.

We've Never Made The Case, Or Argued The Case, That Somehow Osama Bin Laden Was Directly Involved In 9/11. That Evidence Has Never Been Forthcoming.

Osama Bin Laden

You Know, I've Got Experiences Going Back To The Wage Price Controls In The Nixon Administration Where, In Effect, We Had What I Think Was A Terrible Mistake, In That Case A Republican Administration, Where Moved In And Tried To Control The Wages, Prices And Profits Of Every Enterprise In America. It Was A Huge Mistake.

I Worry Very Much That We're In A Situation Now Where There Doesn't Appear To Be Any Limitation Whatsoever In Terms Of The Spending Commitments That Obama's Administration Wants To Make. Vast Expansion In Terms Of The Deficit, But It Also Says A Lot About What They Intend For The Role Of Government In The Society.

I Think Barack Obama Is A One-term President.

We Know He's Been Absolutely Devoted To Trying To Acquire Nuclear Weapons, And We Believe He Has, In Fact, Reconstituted Nuclear Weapons.

I'm One Of Those People Who Believes That Part Of The Greatness Of The United States Is Our Private Sector. It's What We Do As Private Citizens For Ourselves And Our Companies. And Our Economy Is Essentially The Wonder Of The World Because, In Fact, It's Produced So Much For Us Over The Years.

It's Not Just Bin Laden Or Just Those That Are Involved In The Counterterrorism Effort. We've Gotta Cast The Net Broader Than That. But I Think It's A - Very Special Tribute That We All Owe To The Bravery And Courage Of The Men And Women In The Intelligence And Military Business Who Performed So Well To Finally Get It Done.

I'm Absolutely Convinced That The Threat We Face Now, The Idea Of A Terrorist In The Middle Of One Of Our Cities With A Nuclear Weapon, Is Very Real And That We Have To Use Extraordinary Measures To Deal With It.

President Bush Gave Me A Tremendous Opportunity To Serve As The Vice President. I Enjoyed Very Much Having The Opportunity To Be A Part Of His Team. He Told Me At The Outset, He Wanted Me To Sign On To Be A Part Of His Team - And He Was True To His Word, Kept It. He Was Tough. He Was Decisive. He Was Also A Pretty Good Politician.

I Don’t Think That [the War In Iraq] Damaged Our Reputation Around The World.

I Wake Up Every Morning Literally With A Smile On My Face, Grateful For Another Day I Never Thought I Would See.

I Mean, It's Not Just One Day You Get Up, Bang, And You Got Osama Bin Laden. It's The Kind Of Thing Where An Awful Lot Of People Over A Long Period Of Time - Thousands Have Worked This Case And These Issues And Followed On The Leads And Captured Bad Guys And Interrogated Them And So-forth.

It's A Tougher Program For Tougher Customers.

It Will Be Necessary For Us To Be A Nation Of Men, And Not Laws.

Everyone Knows That You're Not Really A Real Man Unless You Own A Gun.

We Believe He Has, In Fact, Reconstituted Nuclear Weapons.

The Issue Is That [saddam] Has Chemical Weapons.

[in Response To The Question "do You Think That You Underestimated The Insurgency's Strength?"] I Think So. I Guess If I Look Back On It Now, I Don't Think Anybody Anticipated The Level Of Violence That We've Encountered.

The Good Lord Didn't See Fit To Put Oil And Gas Only Where There Are Democratic Regimes Friendly To The United States.

We're Fighting A War On Terror Because The Enemy Attacked Us First, And Hit Us Hard. ... Al Qaeda's Leadership Has Said They Have The Right To Kill Four Million Americans,... For Nearly Six Years Now, The United States Has Been Able To Defeat Their Attempts To Attack Us Here At Home. Nobody Can Guarantee That We Won't Be Hit Again.

One Of The Worst Things We Could Do Is Start To Act Now As Though The Attack Of 9/11 Is A Thing Of The Past And Will Never Be Repeated. That's Just Not True.

Once We Got Hit By - On 9/11 And Lost 3,000 People That Day, We Recognized, And It Was One Of The Key Decisions President Bush Made, That This Is Not A Law Enforcement Problem, It Is A Strategic Threat To The United States. It's A War. And Based On That, We Then Adopted A Whole Set Of Policies That Flowed Out Of That Proposition.

In His Years In Washington, Senator Kerry Has Been One Vote Of A Hundred In The United States Senate - And Fortunately On Matters Of National Security, He Was Very Often In The Minority.

I Think The Key That Happened On 9/11 Is We Went From Considering Terrorist Attacks As A Law Enforcement Problem To Considering Terrorist Attacks, Especially On The Scale We Have On 9/11, As Being An Act Of War.

How Could Any Responsible Leader Have Ignored The Iraqi Threat? If We Had Not Acted, Saddam Hussein And His Sons Would Still Be In Power.

I Think That Freedom Means Freedom For Everyone. As Many Of You Know, One Of My Daughters Is Gay And It Is Something We Have Lived With For A Long Time In Our Family. I Think People Ought To Be Free To Enter Into Any Kind Of Union They Wish. Any Kind Of Arrangement They Wish.

My Belief Is We Will, In Fact, Be Greeted As Liberators. . . . I Think It Will Go Relatively Quickly, . . . [in] Weeks Rather Than Months.

The United States Needs To Be Not So Much Loved As It Needs To Be Respected. Sometimes, That Requires Us To Take Actions That Generate Controversy. I'm Not At All Sure That That's What The Obama Administration Believes.

Instead, The Terrorists See Just What They Were Hoping For, Our Unity Gone, Our Resolve Shaken, Our Leaders Distracted. In Short, They See Weakness And Opportunity.

Oil Remains Fundamentally A Government Business. While Many Regions Of The World Offer Great Oil Opportunities, The Middle East With Two-thirds Of The World's Oil And The Lowest Cost, Is Still Where The Prize Ultimately Lies, Even Though Companies Are Anxious For Greater Access There, Progress Continues To Be Slow.

...and While Everybody Was Tremendously Impressed With The Low Cost Of The Conflict, For The 146 Americans Who Were Killed In Action And For Their Families, It Wasn't A Cheap War. And The Question In My Mind Is How Many Additional American Casualties Is Saddam Worth? And The Answer Is Not Very Damned Many.

I Think There’s No Question But What The Tail End Of The Bush Administration, Bush-cheney Administration, That We Took Steps Specifically Geared To Try And Free Up The Financial Sector.

The Question In My Mind Is How Many Additional American Casualties Is Saddam Worth? And The Answer Is Not Very Damned Many.

The Bottom Line Is That We've Had Enormous Successes (in Iraq) And We Will Continue To Have Enormous Successes.

After 9/11, It Became Clear That We [the United States] Had To Do Several Things To Have A Successful Strategy To Win The Global War On Terror, Specifically That We Had To Go After The Terrorists Wherever We Might Find Them, That We Also Had To Go After State Sponsors Of Terror, Those Who Might Provide Sanctuary Or Safe Harbor For Terror.

I Want To Avoid Personal Attacks, ... I Promise Not To Make Fun Of Your Singing.

I Had A Reputation Of Being Somewhat Moderate, Partly, I Think, Because I Wasn't A 'bomb Thrower' Like Some Of My Conservative Colleagues, And Partly Because I Got Along With People All Across The Political Spectrum.

I Got To Be White House Chief Of Staff, Ten Years Of Congressman, Secretary Of Defense, Vice-president. If You're A Political Junkie Like I Obviously Am - That Was - Every One Of Those Was Just A Tremendous Experience. I'm Very Comfortable With What I Did And Why I Did It And How I Did It. And I'll Let Others Judge Whether They Liked It Or Not.

We Have No Intention Of Ignoring Or Appeasing History's Latest Gang Of Fanatics Trying To Murder Their Way To Power.

Whoever Controls The Flow Of Persian Gulf Oil Has A Stranglehold Not Only On Our Economy But Also On The Other Countries Of The World As Well.

Countries Of The World

I'm Not Apologetic With Respect To The Policies Of The Bush Administration. I Think We Basically Got It Right.

If We're Successful In Iraq ... We Will Have Struck A Major Blow Right At The Heart Of The Base, If You Will, The Geographic Base Of The Terrorists Who Have Had Us Under Assault Now For Many Years, But Most Especially On 9/11.

I've Been Extraordinarily Fortunate That I've Been Able To Go Live A Very Active, Stressful Life. And I Don't Believe That My Heart Disease Changed Me For The Worst.

Reagan Proved That Deficits Don't Matter.

As A Former Secretary Of Defense, I Think Donald Rumsfeld Is The Best Secretary Of Defense The United States Has Ever Had.

I Don’t Spend A Lot Of Time Thinking About My Faults.

I Worry That We're Seeing A Situation- Obama's Administration Not Only Committing Us The Huge Deficits For The Future, But Is Also Redefining The Relationship Between Government, On The One Hand, And The Private Sector On The Other.

We Haven't Really Had The Time Yet To Pore Through All Those Records In Baghdad. We'll Find Ample Evidence Confirming The Link, That Is The Connection If You Will Between Al Qaida And The Iraqi Intelligence Services. They Have Worked Together On A Number Of Occasions.

Intelligence Services

Let Us Rid Ourselves Of The Fiction That Low Oil Prices Are Somehow Good For The United States.

I Think You Can Not Be Blown Off Course By The Fluctuations In The Public Opinion Polls.

The Important Thing Here To Understand Is That The People That Are At Guantanamo Are Bad People. I Mean, These Are Terrorists For The Most Part. These Are People That Were Captured In The Battlefield Of Afghanistan Or Rounded Up As Part Of The Al Qaeda Network. We've Already Screened The Detainees There And Released A Number, Sent Them Back To Their Home Countries. But What's Left Is Hard Core.

We've Gotten A Long Way On Missile Defense. We Know How To Do It. We Know How To Take Down Incoming Warheads, But We Need To Do A Lot More Work In Order To Be - To Deploy A System That'll Defend The United States Against Those Kinds Of Limited Strikes That Might Be Possible By A Nuclear Armed North Korea Or Iran.

Because If We Make The Wrong Choice, Then The Danger Is That We'll Get Hit Again, That We'll Be Hit In A Way That Will Be Devastating From The Standpoint Of The United States, And That We'll Fall Back Into The Pre-9/11 Mind Set If You Will, That In Fact These Terrorist Attacks Are Just Criminal Acts, And That We're Not Really At War. I Think That Would Be A Terrible Mistake For Us.

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People Tell Me That Senator Edwards Got Picked For His Good Looks, His Sex Appeal, And His Great Hair. I Say To Them: How Do You Think I Got The Job?

Remember, Success For A Politician Is 50% Plus One. You Don't Have To Have Everybody On Board.

As I Think About The Future, I'm Back Where Most People Live Their Lives. Which Is, Death Is Not Imminent, And That's Different.

That's The Nature Of The Intelligence Business. You Have To Work With What You Can Get Your Hands On, But It Is.. And In Fact It's More An Art Form Than It Is A Science, And You Have To Continually Work The Problem, Continually Try.

Except For The Occasional Heart Attack, I Never Felt Better.

One Of The Reasons The Deficit Got As Big As It Did, Frankly, Was Because Of The Economic Slowdown, The Fall-off In Deficits, The Terrorist Attacks. A Significant Chunk Was Taken Out Of The Economy By What Happened After The Attacks Of 9/11.

You've Got A Job To Do, And Because You've Got A Job To Do, You've Got To Focus On That, So You Don't Have Time For Personal Considerations.

Unfortunately, We Don't Have The Option Of Marriage In Our Country. We Could Go To Britain Or Spain Or Argentina And Do Something Symbolic, But That's Not What I Want. I Want To Have The Rights Of Anybody Else In My Home Country. I Don't Want To Be A Second-class Citizen

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I've Been Criticized Because I've Had The Temerity To Speak Out And Done A Couple Of Interviews Since I Left Office. I Don't Find Anything Surprising About That. I Don't Say - I've Been Careful Not To Get Personal In Terms Of My Criticisms For My Comment, But I Think The Issues Are Simply Too Important For The Future Of The Nation For Us To Operate As Though Those Of Us Who Disagree Somehow Shouldn't Speak Out And Be Heard. I Think We Need To Be Heard.

You Cannot Be Driven By The Polls. The Polls Change All The Time; They're Easily Manipulated By Whoever Wants To Ask Those Poll Questions; They Go Up; They Go Down.

Saddam Hussein Had A Lengthy History Of Reckless And Sudden Aggression. He Cultivated Ties To Terror -- Hosting The Abu Nidal Organization, Supporting Terrorists, And Making Payments To The Families Of Suicide Bombers. He Also Had An Established Relationship With Al Qaida -- Providing Training To Al Qaida Members In Areas Of Poisons, Gases And Conventional Bombs. He Built, Possessed, And Used Weapons Of Mass Destruction.

Mass Destruction

We Have Great Information. They're Going To Welcome Us. It'll Be Like The American Army Going Through The Streets Of Paris. They're Sitting There Ready To Form A New Government. The People Will Be So Happy With Their Freedoms That We'll Probably Back Ourselves Out Of There Within A Month Or Two.

Streets Of Paris

I'm More Concerned With Bad Guys Who Got Out And Released Than I Am With A Few That In Fact Were Innocent.

I Got Sick, Hospitalized, Had No Insurance. And The Money I Had Saved For Our Honeymoon Went To Pay Medical Bills. So I Had Been In The Position Of Not Having Insurance When I Needed Health Care.

I Do Find That The Mainstream Media Oftentimes Is What I Would Consider Off Base Or Has A Bias.

We Also Have To Work, Though, Sort Of The Dark Side, If You Will. We've Got To Spend Time In The Shadows In The Intelligence World. A Lot Of What Needs To Be Done Here Will Have To Be Done Quietly, Without Any Discussion, Using Sources And Methods That Are Available To Our Intelligence Agencies... That's The World These Folks Operate In, And So It's Going To Be Vital For Us To Use Any Means At Our Disposal, Basically, To Achieve Our Objective.

One Of The Problems We Have As A Government Is Our Inability To Keep Secrets. And It Costs Us, In Terms Of Our Relationship With Other Governments, In Terms Of The Willingness Of Other Intelligence Services To Work With Us, In Terms Of Revealing Sources And Methods. And All Of Those Elements Enter Into Some Of These Leaks.

What We Did In Iraq Was Exactly The Right Thing To Do. If I Had It To Recommend All Over Again, I Would Recommend Exactly The Same Course Of Action.

We Were Trying To Get All Of The Planes Down Out Of The Sky. And We Watched As The Towers Of The World Trade Center Collapsed - Something No One Expected And Anticipated. And You Could Sit There And See And Be Aware That Thousands Of People Were At That Moment Being Killed As A Result Of The Terrorist Attacks That Struck The United States.

You Really Do Think About It Institutionally; This Is Your Job, And To Some Extent You Benefit From Having A Job To Do At A Moment Like This. You Have Things That You Have To Make Happen. And You Don't Have Time For The Emotional Reaction That Might Otherwise Occur If Somebody Was Just Sitting There Watching These Events Unfold And Had No Responsibilities.

Sarah Palin Is An Attractive Candidate, But Based On Her Background, She Only Was Governor For What, Two Years. I Don`t Think She Passed That Test.

[saddam Hussein Is Aggressively Seeking Nuclear And Biological Weapons And ] The United States May Well Become The Target.

The Senator From Massachusetts Has Given Us Ample Grounds To Doubt The Judgment And The Attitude He Brings To Bear On Vital Issues Of National Security.

And The Fact Of The Matter Is There Were Thousands Of People That Went Through Those Training Camps In Afghanistan. We Know They Are Seeking Deadlier Weapons - Chemical, Biological And Nuclear Weapons If They Can Get It.

There Comes A Time When Deceit And Defiance Must Be Seen For What They Are. At That Point, A Gathering Danger Must Be Directly Confronted. At That Point, We Must Show That Beyond Our Resolutions Is Actual Resolve.

If The Democratic Policies Had Been Pursued Over The Last Two Or Three Years... We Would Not Have Had The Kind Of Job Growth We've Had.

Had The Decision Belonged To Senator Kerry, Saddam Hussein Would Still Be In Power Today In Iraq. In Fact, Saddam Hussein Would Almost Certainly Still Be In Control Of Kuwait.

As Vice President One Of The Things I Spend Time On Is The Continuity Of Government; That's The Main Reason I'm Here Is A Back Up For The President If Anything Happens To Him.

Rarely Has A U.s. President Been So Wrong About So Much At The Expense Of So Many.

I Think There's - The Assumption Seems To Predominate On The Other Side That The Reason There's Been Problems In The World Is Because Of U.s. Activity, U.s. Conduct. We're The Bad Guys.we're The Ones That Lead People To Become Terrorists. We're The Ones That Generate The Kind Of Criticism That Has Given Al Qaeda An Excuse To Come Attack The United States.

With Respect To The Question Of Relationships, My General View Is That Freedom Means Freedom For Everyone. People...ought To Be Free To Enter Into Any Kind Of Relationship They Want To.

I Think The Decision That's Been Made With Respect To Allowing Gays To Serve Openly In The Military Is A Good One.

If You're Going To Go Increase Taxes On Small Businesses, You're Going To Slow Down The Extent To Which We're Able To Reduce Unemployment. So I Think It's A Serious Mistake; The Wrong Time To Raise Taxes.

We Urge All Democratic Nations And The United Nations To Answer The Iraqi Governing Council's Call For Support For The People Of Iraq In Making The Transition To Democracy.

When We Get People Who Are More Concerned About Reading The Rights To An Al Qaeda Terrorist Than They Are With Protecting The United States Against People Who Are Absolutely Committed To Do Anything They Can To Kill Americans, Then I Worry.

It Is Easy To Take Liberty For Granted, When You Have Never Had It Taken From You.

If We Have Reason To Believe Someone Is Preparing An Attack Against The U.s., Has Developed That Capability, Harbours Those Aspirations, Then I Think The U.s. Is Justified In Dealing With That, If Necessary, By Military Force.

We Now Have Irrefutable Evidence That [saddam] Has Once Again Set Up And Reconstituted His Program To Take Uranium, To Enrich It To Sufficiently High Grade, So That It Will Function As The Base Material As A Nuclear Weapon. And There's No Doubt About The Fact That The Level Of Effort Has Escalated In Recent Months.

After 9/11 We Were Prepared To Use Military Force. We Were Prepared To Go After Not Only The Terrorists, But Those Who Sponsor Terror And Provide Sanctuary And Safe Harbor For Them. We Were Prepared To Use Our Intelligence Assets The Way We Would Against An Enemy That Threatened The United States Itself, To Put In Place, For Example, Things Like The Terror Surveillance Program And To Have A Robust Interrogation Program On Detainees. Those Are The Acts You Take When You Feel You're At War And That The Very Existence Of The Nation Is Threatened.

Europeans Know That Their Great Experiment In Building Peace, Unity And Prosperity Cannot Survive As A Privileged Enclave, Surrounded On Its Outskirts By Breeding Grounds Of Hatred And Fanaticism.

It's Very Important To Go Back And Keep In Mind The Distinction Between Handling These Events As Criminal Acts, Which Was The Way We Did Before 9/11, And Then Looking At 9/11 And Saying, 'this Is Not A Criminal Act,' Not When You Destroy 16 Acres Of Manhattan, Kill 3,000 Americans, Blow A Big Hole In The Pentagon. That's An Act Of War.

I Have Argued In The Past, And Would Again, If We Had Been Able To Pre-empt The Attacks Of 9/11 Would We Have Done It? And I Think Absolutely. We Have To Be Prepared Now To Take The Kind Of Bold Action That's Being Contemplated With Respect To Iraq In Order To Ensure That We Don't Get Hit With A Devastating Attack When The Terrorists' Organization Gets Married Up With A Rogue State That's Willing To Provide It With The Kinds Of Deadly Capabilities That Saddam Hussein Has Developed And Used Over The Years.

The Good Lord Didn't See Fit To Put Oil And Gas Only Where There Are Democratically Elected Regimes Friendly To The United States. Occasionally We Have To Operate In Places Where, All Things Considered, One Would Not Normally Choose To Go. But, We Go Where The Business Is.

I Think, In Fact, The Situation With Respect To Al Qaeda, To Say That, You Know, That Was A Big Attack We Had On 9/11, But It's Not Likely Again, I Just Think That's Dead Wrong. I Think The Biggest Strategic Threat The United States Faces Today Is The Possibility Of Another 9/11 With A Nuclear Weapon Or A Biological Agent Of Some Kind. And I Think Al Qaeda Is Out There Even As We Meet, Trying To Figure Out How To Do That.

I Was A Big Supporter Of Waterboarding. I Was A Big Supporter Of The Enhanced Interrogation Techniques.

Interrogation Techniques

Like Many Americans, I've Always Been Intrigued By Bill Clinton. I Obviously Didn't Always Agree With Him - Enjoyed Running Against His Legacy In 2000, When Al Gore Was His Designated Successor, But I Don't Have Anything Negative I Would Say About Bill Clinton.

I Was In End Stage Heart Failure, Liver And Kidneys Shutting Down, And On An Emergency Basis They Went In And Planted A Pump In My Chest. It Was Battery Operated. That Kept Me Alive For 20 Months And That Got Me To The Transplant. And I Wake Up Every Morning Now With A Smile On My Face, Thankful For The Gift Of Another Day I Never Expected To See.

We've Had Experiences Where The President's Been Shot, But Never Had A Situation Where The Vice President Shot Somebody.

In Iraq, A Ruthless Dictator Cultivated Weapons Of Mass Destruction And The Means To Deliver Them. He Gave Support To Terrorists, Had An Established Relationship With Al Qaeda, And His Regime Is No More.

Mass Destruction

From Kindergarten To Graduation, I Went To Public Schools, And I Know That They Are A Key To Being Sure That Every Child Has A Chance To Succeed And To Rise In The World.

I Worship The Ground Paul Ryan Walks On.

The Biggest Threat We Face Is The Possibility Of Terrorist Groups Like Al Qaeda Equipped With Weapons Of Mass Destruction, With Nukes, Bugs Or Gas. That Was The Threat After 9/11 And When We Took Down Saddam Hussein We Eliminated Iraq As A Potential Source Of That.

Mass Destruction

We Must Be Prepared To Face Our Responsibilities And Be Willing To Use Force If Necessary.

My Own Personal View Is That People Ought To Have The Right To Enter Into Any Kind Of Relationship They Want To Enter Into. With Respect To How That's Affected Or Regulated By The State, Those Are State Decisions. Different States Are Likely To Make Different Decisions Based Upon Their Own Wishes And Desire Of The People Of The State, And That's Perfectly Acceptable.

There's Overwhelming Evidence That There Was A Connection Between Al Qaeda And The Iraqi Government.

I Have Not Seen Al Gore's Movie.

In Terms Of Asking Questions, I Plead Guilty. I Ask A Hell Of A Lot Of Questions. That's My Job.

Asking Questions

That Intelligence Capability Is Enormously Important To The United States, To Our Conduct Of Foreign Policy, To Defense Matters, To Economic Matters. And I Am A Strong Supporter Of It.

I'm Often Asked Why I Left Politics And Went To Halliburton And I Explain That I Reached The Point Where I Was Mean-spirited, Short-tempered And Intolerant Of Those Who Disagreed With Me And They Said 'hell, You'd Make A Great Ceo', So I Went To Texas And Joined The Private Sector.

The Iraqi Forces Are Conducting The Mother Of All Retreats.

You Got To Have People At The Top Who Respond To And Are Selected By Presidents.

I Support The President's Plan To Amend The Constitution, Banning Same-sex Marriage.

His Regime Has Had High-level Contacts With Al Qaeda Going Back A Decade And Has Provided Training To Al Qaeda Terrorists.

I Feel Very Strongly That The Significance Of 9/11 Cannot Be Underestimated. It Forces Us To Think In New Ways About Strategy, About National Security, About How We Structure Our Forces And About How We Use U.s. Military Power.

I Have Not Suggested There's A Connection Between Iraq And 9/11, But There's Clearly An Established Iraqi Track Record With Terror.

We Have To Make America The Best Place In The World To Do Business.

We Do Know, With Absolute Certainty, That Saddam Hussein Is Using His Procurement System To Acquire The Equipment He Needs In Order To Enrich Uranium To Build A Nuclear Weapon.

I Don't Pay A Lot Of Attention, Frankly, To What Barack Obama Says.

The Middle East With Two Thirds Of The World's Oil And Lowest Cost, Is Still Where The Prize Ultimately Lies.

I Can't Think Of A Time When We've Had A Region Emerge As Suddenly To Become As Strategically Significant As The Caspian.

We Have To Deal With This New Type Of Threat In A Way We Haven’t Yet Defined. . . . With A Low-probability, High-impact Event Like This . . . If There’s A One Percent Chance That Pakistani Scientists Are Helping Al Qaeda Build Or Develop A Nuclear Weapon, We Have To Treat It As A Certainty In Terms Of Our Response.

Cheney, Cheney, You Can't Hide, We Charge You With Genocide.

The Important Thing Here To Understand Is That The People That Are At Guantanamo Are Bad People. I Mean, These Are Terrorists For The Most Part.

Principle Is Ok Up To A Certain Point, But Principle Doesn't Do Any Good If You Lose.

America Has Shown We Are Serious About Removing The Threat Of Weapons Of Mass Destruction... We Now Know That Saddam Hussein Had The Capacity To Produce Weapons Of Mass Destruction.... We Know He Had The Necessary Infrastructure Because We Found The Labs And The Dual-use Facilities That Could Be Used For These Chemical And Biological Agents. We Know That He Was Developing The Delivery Systems - Ballistic Missiles - That Had Been Prohibited By The United Nations.

Mass Destruction

We Need To Have A Pro-growth Policy Put In Place That Offers People Hope And Offers The Opportunity For Businesses To Expand And For Them To Have Confidence In What The World Is Going To Look Like For The Next Two Or Three Or Four Years With Respect To Economic Policy.

I Think Freedom Means Freedom For Everybody.

You Know, In This Business, You Don't Have Any Control Over What The Press Says And How They Portray Things. And That's Their Prerogative. But I Think Anybody Who Looks At It Objectively Has Trouble Making The Case That Somehow This Is A Bad Economy.

Another Argument Holds That Opposing Saddam Hussein Would Cause Even Greater Troubles In That Part Of The World, And Interfere With The Larger War Against Terror. I Believe The Opposite Is True.

My Belief Is We Will, In Fact, Be Greeted As Liberators.

My Own Belief Is That The Way We Grow The Economy, Create Jobs, Create Wealth Is In The Private Sector. The Government Doesn't Do That.

There's Every Reason To Believe There Will Be Further Attacks Attempted Against The United States. For Us To Spend So Much Time Patting Ourselves On The Back Because We Got Bin Laden That We Miss The Next Attack Would Be A Terrible Tragedy.

We Need, From Time To Time, To Use Military Force Or All Of The Resources At Our Command In Order To Defend The Nation And Defend Our Friends. Sometimes, That Requires Us To Take Actions That Generate Controversy. I Think There Are Probably Some Who Actually Believe, If We Just Go Talk Nice To These Folks, Everything Is Going To Be Ok. I Don't Think The World Works That Way.

I Learned Early On That If You Don't Want Your Memos To Get You In Trouble Someday, Just Don't Write Any.

It Used To Be You Needed To Have A Very Large Sophisticated State Before You Could Even Have A Nuclear Weapon... Now The Technology Is Widespread Enough. It Doesn't Take Very Many People To Be Able To Cobble Together A Devastating Attack, And All It Takes Is One.

From Our Perspective, Trying To Deal With This Continuing Campaign Of Terror, If You Will, The War On Terror That We're Engaged In, This Is A Continuing Enterprise. The People That Were Involved In Some Of Those Activities Before 9/11 Are Still Out There.

I Think We Need To Significantly Reduce The Regulatory Burden On The Private Sector. The Obama Administration Is Doing The Opposite. They're Loading On More And More Regulation On The Private Respect To How The Economy Functions.

I Think I Was Able To Survive Five Heart Attacks Because I Never Postponed Going To The Hospital When Something Didn't Feel Right.

The Federalist Society Has Made Important Contributions To The Nation's Understanding Of Our Constitutional Heritage.

I Think We May Well Have Some Kind Of Presence There Over A Period Of Time... The Level Of Activity That We See Today From A Military Standpoint, I Think, Will Clearly Decline. I Think They're In The Last Throes, If You Will, Of The Insurgency.

I - Obviously, I'm Not A Big Fan Of President Obama. I Think He's Been One Of Our Weakest Presidents. I Just Fundamentally Disagree With Him Philosophically.

I Had Other Priorities In The Sixties Than Military Service.

The Plan Was Criticized By Some Retired Military Officers Embedded In Tv Studios. But With Every Advance By Our Coalition Forces, The Wisdom Of That Plan Becomes More Apparent.

Don Rumsfeld Is The Finest Secretary Of Defense The Nation Has Ever Had.

The Threat Is There. It's Very Real And It's Continuing. And What The Obama People Are Doing, In Effect, Is Saying, Well, We Don't Need Those Tough Policies That We Had. That Says Either They Didn't Work, Which We Know Is Not The Case - They Did Work, They Kept Us Safe For Seven Years - Or That Now Somehow The Threat's Gone Away. There's No Longer A Threat Out There, We Don't Have To Be As Tough And Aggressive As The Bush Administration Was.

A Little Tough Talk In The Midst Of A Campaign Or As Part Of A Presidential Debate Cannot Obscure A Record Of 30 Years Of Being On The Wrong Side Of Defense Issues.

The Only Thing Left That Shows I Was A Heart Patient Is I Have A Scar Down The Middle Of My Chest Where They Went In Three Times To Do Open Heart Surgery. I Have A Brand New Heart Inside, And All The Mechanical And Electronic Gear And So Forth Is All Gone.

Obviously, It's A Big Problem How Do We Provide Quality Care To The Maximum Number Of People. And It's Not An Easy Problem To Solve.

I Have Not Suggested There's A Connection Between Iraq And 9/11.

I Can Think Of A Lot Of Words To Describe Senator Kerry's Position On Iraq; "consistent" Is Not One Of Them.

When George Bush Asked Me To Sign On, It Obviously Wasn't Because He Was Worried About Carrying Wyoming. We Got 70 Percent Of The Vote In Wyoming, Although Those Three Electoral Votes Turned Out To Be Pretty Important Last Time Around.

I Think It's Fair To Say You Can't Predict A Straight Line To Victory. You Know, There'll Be Good Days And Bad Days Along The Way.

To Bring The Worst Of The Worst Terrorists Inside The United States Would Be Cause For Great Danger And Regret In The Years To Come. It Is Recklessness Cloaked In Righteousness, And Would Make The American People Less Safe.

I Think The Record Speaks For Itself. These Are Two Individuals Who Have Been For The War When The Headlines Were Good And Against It When Their Poll Ratings Were Bad.

The Columbia Is Lost, But The Dreams That Inspired Its Crew Remain With Us.

I Believe That Marriage Is Between A Man And A Woman. But I Also Believe That Gay And Lesbians And Gay And Lesbian Couples, Those Who Have Been In Long-term Relationships, Deserve To Be Treated Respectfully, They Deserve To Have Benefits.

Well, We've Got A Major Effort Under Way To Try To Educate Everybody, To Let Them Know We Have A Zero Tolerance Policy Where Sexual Assault Is Involved.

I Think They're In The Last Throes, If You Will, Of The Insurgency.

Under Our Plan You Can Build Wealth, Even If You Don't Have A Dollar To Spare.

It’s Clearly Established In Terms Of Training, Provision Of Bomb-making Experts, Training Of People With Respect To Chemical And Biological Warfare Capabilities, That Al-qaeda Sent Personnel To Iraq For Training And So Forth.

I Did My 40 Years In Washington, 40-plus, And It's Time To Pause And Reflect And Think About What I've Seen And Done.

In Our Own Country, We Take Democratic Values Seriously - And So We Always Have A Vigorous Debate On The Issues. That's Part Of The Greatness Of America, And We Wouldn't Have It Any Other Way.

The Days Of Looking The Other Way While Despotic Regimes Trample Human Rights, Rob Their Nations' Wealth, And Then Excuse Their Failings By Feeding Their People A Steady Diet Of Anti-western Hatred Are Over.

I Worked For George Bush. I'm Proud To Have Worked For Him. I Think That A Lot Of The Most Controversial Things We Did, That People Didn't Like And - And Criticized Us For, Things Like The Terror Surveillance Program Or The Enhanced Interrogation Techniques, Were Things That Allowed Us To Save Lives.

Interrogation Techniques

I Think Things Have Gotten So Bad Inside Iraq, From The Standpoint Of The Iraqi People, My Belief Is We Will, In Fact, Be Greeted As Liberators.

The Greatest Threat Now Is A 9/11 Occurring With A Group Of Terrorists Armed Not With Airline Tickets And Box Cutters, But With A Nuclear Weapon In The Middle Of One Of Our Own Cities...there's A High Probability Of Such An Attempt.

I Reached A Point Towards The End On The Old Heart Where I Had Trouble Getting Out Of A Chair. All I Wanted To Do Was Get Out Of Bed In The Morning And Walk To My Office And Sit Back Down In The Chair. Now I Throw 50 Pound Bags Of Horse Feed In The Back Of My Pickup Truck And I Don't Even Think About It. I'm Back Doing Those Things.

Simply Stated, There Is No Doubt That Saddam Hussein Now Has Weapons Of Mass Destruction. There Is No Doubt He Is Amassing Them To Use Against Our Friends, Against Our Allies, And Against Us.

Mass Destruction

I Think We Need A Very, Very Serious Effort, Primarily Through Tax Policy To Provide Incentives And Encouragement For People To Save And Invest And Expand Their Businesses And To Create More Jobs. The Kind Of Thing We Did In The Early Reagan Years, 30 Years Ago. I Think That's Essential.

Conservation May Be A Sign Of Personal Virtue, But It Is Not A Sufficient Basis For A Sound, Comprehensive Energy Policy.

I Think President Obama Is Going To Be A One-term President.

President Obama

You Wake Up Every Morning With A Smile On Your Face Because You've Got A New Day You Never Expected To Have. And There's A Sense Of Wonderment. Nothing Short Of Magical.

You Can't Fall Back On The Private Sector And Say, 'you Take Care Of The Nation's Banking System.' That's A Fundamental Function Of The Government, The Federal Reserve, The Treasury And The Fdic, Etc. All Of Those Agencies Have A Major Role To Play There.

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Theodore Roethke

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