|
Hearing
of the
Committee on Government Affairs
September
21, 2001
Testimony
of
Governor
James S. Gilmore, III
Governor of the
Commonwealth of Virginia
&
Chairman
Advisory Panel to Assess the Capabilities for
Domestic
Response to Terrorism Involving Weapons of Mass Destruction
Introduction
Chairman
Lieberman, Senator Thompson, and distinguished Committee Members,
thank you for inviting me to discuss recommendations of the
Advisory Panel to Assess Domestic Response Capabilities for
Terrorism Involving Weapons of Mass Destruction, a national
commission established by Congress in 1999 (P.L. 105-261). The Advisory Panel has assessed our Nation’s combined
federal, state and local capabilities to detect, deter, prevent
– and respond to and recover from – a terrorist attack inside
America’s borders, and to offer recommendations for preparing
the Nation to address terrorist threats.
For
almost three years, I have served as Chairman of the Advisory
Panel, and it has been my privilege to work with experts in a
broad range of fields, including current and former federal, state
and local officials and specialists in terrorism, intelligence,
the military, law enforcement, emergency management, fire
services, medicine and public health.
I
am saddened to report that, as of today, one member of our Panel
is reported as missing at ground zero in New York.
Ray Downey, Chief of Special Operations for the New York
City Fire Department, was one of the first emergency responders to
arrive at the World Trade Center on September 11. Firemen from California to Virginia to New York know Ray
Downey as a man of great courage and skill and commitment. Our prayers go out to Ray and his family.
Attack on American Freedom
Ladies
and gentlemen, for many generations to come, September 11, 2001,
is a day that will stand out in the history of the United States
and, indeed, the entire world, as the day tyranny attacked
freedom. Individuals
who committed these attacks on the people of the United States, in
New York and Virginia, sought a decisive strike, one that was
designed to remake the world and the post-Cold War era.
The
picture of two commercial airplanes careening into two office
towers and a wounded Pentagon – recorded for posterity –
forever will remind our children and grandchildren of how precious
freedom is and that freedom can never be taken for granted.
The
goal of these terrorists was to prove that the great democracies
are not the way of the future. The goal was, in fact, to establish
the dominance of tyranny, force, and fear – and to blot out a
love of freedom and individual liberty, which has been growing
consistently since the Enlightenment centuries ago.
In the 21st century, the United States stands as
the ultimate statement and symbol of that human freedom and
liberty across the world; and, therefore, the United States was
the country attacked.
Ladies
and gentlemen, the people who committed these crimes, with those
goals in mind, have failed. They
have failed in their attacks.
They have not blotted out the United States as the ultimate
formation and symbol of liberty.
They have not diminished the resolve of the United States.
They have not created fear and terror in the United States.
Yes,
we grieve as a civilized people for the people who have died.
Freedom-loving people in New York at the World Trade Center
– a stunning loss of life in the nation's largest city.
At the Pentagon, across the river in Virginia.
The people who died on the airplanes, totally innocent
victims. As I recall, having read the manifest on the airplanes, there
were fathers with their young daughters on those planes.
Barbara Olson, who we all knew and loved.
She was a personal friend mine. We lost our firemen and
emergency rescue responders, who gave their lives attempting to
save the lives of their fellow Americans.
Ray Downey, another personal friend, may be one who gave
the last measure of commitment.
Yes, I grieve. The
American people grieve. Any
civilized people would grieve.
But,
in the eternal conflict between freedom and tyranny, the people of
the United States shall never retreat.
Work of the Advisory Panel
Sooner or later, those who inflicted these injuries will
feel the full weight of justice and the free world’s combined
efforts to hold them responsible.
We cannot undo their evil actions now.
If only we could. Be
we can, and must, move forward to do everything we can to prevent
a tragedy of this magnitude from striking again in our homeland.
That brings me to the work of the Advisory Panel.
The Advisory Panel was established by Section 1405 of the
National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1999, Public
Law 105-261 (H.R. 3616, 105th Congress, 2nd
Session) (October 17, 1998).
For
the last three years I have worked with a distinguished panel of
experts, with staff support from the RAND Corporation, to draw up
a blueprint for American preparedness. Our commission has been a three-year commission.
It began to work in the year 1999. We have issued two
reports to the President and Congress. The first report was issued December of 1999, and the second
report in December of 2000. Both
reports can be downloaded from RAND’s website:
www.rand.org/organization/nsrd/terrpanel.
The
work of our Advisory Panel is
significantly and qualitatively different from any previous
terrorism commission. Our
panel includes a unique combination of experts from all three
levels of government representing the intelligence community,
front-line local emergency responders, military experts, and state
and local law enforcement. We
also have leaders from the health care community. Reflective of the broad array of experts and a strong
“outside-the-beltway” perspective, our panel has addressed the
full realm of issues from assessment of the risk to prescriptions
for detection, prevention, response and recovery.
We have focused a tremendous amount of attention upon state
and local first-responders, as well as intelligence issues and
national coordination topics.
Other commissions have not covered as wide a realm of
topics.
Conclusions & Recommendations Issued in
First and Second Reports
In our
first report (December 1999), we provided a comprehensive
assessment of the actual threat of a terrorist attack on U.S.
soil. Among our
findings were the following:
·
First and
foremost, the threat of a terrorist attack on some level inside
our borders was inevitable, and the United States must prepare.
·
In
assessing the kind of attack the United States could expect, we
concluded that a conventional attack (such as the one that
occurred on September 11) had a high probability of occurrence and
should receive more attention than they were receiving at that
time. We concluded
that an attack using weapons of mass destruction, while
threatening a high impact, had a lower probability of occurrence
in the near term, but could not be ignored.
Regardless of the kind of attack, we called for a national
strategy to address the full spectrum of possible attacks.
·
We also
said that the terrorist threat would be more lethal than ever
before because the trend among terrorists is toward greater and
greater lethality.
·
We
concluded that the real weapon is not the device or the material
involved, but the terrorist delivery capacity and capability. Unfortunately, I am afraid that this point has been borne out
by the events of September 11.
·
Our review
revealed that counter-terrorism efforts to date had been largely
reactionary, to a threat not clearly understood. While we should prepare, first and foremost, for the most
likely conventional terrorist attack scenario (such as the
conventional attack we recently witnessed), we must also heed the
threat of a more exotic attack by weapons of mass destruction.
·
We
concluded that a clear comprehensive national vision and strategy
for large or small events must be developed and put into place,
but that such a vision and strategy did not presently exist as of
the time of that report. We
recognized that a coordinated national strategy could be built
upon the well-tested system that already exists for responding to
natural and man-made disasters, such as hurricanes, earthquakes,
toxic chemical spills and nuclear accidents.
That is, firefighters, emergency medical providers, public
health offices and private hospitals, police and the National
Guard.
·
And we
stressed the paramount importance of preserving our citizens'
constitutional rights and civil liberties. We said, “[T]he Panel
urges officials at all levels of government to ensure that the
civil liberties of our citizens are protected.”
We can meet this terrorist threat without trampling the
Constitution. In
fact, the goal of the enemy would be to have us trample our
constitutional rights. We
don't have to do that and we should never ask the people of the
United States to give up their freedoms because of an attack like
this.
Our
second report, issued a year later (December 2000), contained
about 50 recommendations for improving our nation's preparedness
against terrorism. Most
importantly, the second report underscored the need for something
more than a federal
strategy. The federal
government’s role represents only one component of a national
strategy. The
distinction here is an important one. The federal government
cannot address this threat alone.
We need new public and private partnerships.
Every state and local community has capabilities,
resources, assets, experience and training that must be brought to
bear in addressing this threat.
Among
our most important recommendations in our second report are the
following recommendations:
·
First, we called for statutory creation of a new
“National Office for Combating Terrorism” to coordinate
national terrorism policy and preparedness in the Executive Branch
– located in the White House.
The Director of this office should be high ranking,
appointed by the President, and confirmed by the Senate.
Foremost, the office should have the responsibility to
develop a comprehensive national strategy to be approved by the
President.
·
We proposed
that Congress create a “Special Committee for Combating
Terrorism.” This could be a joint committee of senators and
congressmen to create a unified legislative view or it could
encompass two distinct committees, one for the House and one for
the Senate. Of
course, we do not presume to instruct the Congress on how it
should conduct its affairs, but we offer that recommendation in
the best interests of the people of the United States.
The Special Committee should have a direct link to the
Executive Branch's National Office for Combating Terrorism, and it
should be the first referral for legislation preparing our nation
for terrorist attacks.
·
Next, we
addressed the issue of intelligence-sharing and focused on the
fact that it is very typical in the intelligence community to hold
information so close it can often not be communicated to those
responsible parties who need to know.
This is particularly true of sharing intelligence
information with state and local authorities.
Thus, we need to develop a comprehensive national
intelligence system based on sound need-to-know principles.
·
We found
our federal intelligence apparatus was lacking critical tools it
needs to detect terrorist plots, so we recommended improvements to
human intelligence capabilities such as, for example, rescinding
the CIA guidelines on paying foreign informants engaged in
terrorist or criminal activity.
·
We
recognized the importance of state and local agencies in
responding to and recovering from terrorist attacks and insisted
they be included in the plotting of a national strategy.
Thus, the panel recommended a number of ways to strengthen
the nation's first responders:
firemen, law enforcement, emergency medical services and
emergency management.
·
We also
called for improvement of health and medical response capabilities
and I think everybody is very proud of the hospitals and medical
services that have been called into action over the past weeks.
Our report, however, recognized that our public and private
hospitals are prepared for the routine, but in the case of a high
concentration of traumas resulting from a weapon of mass
destruction – especially biological in nature – or a
catastrophic conventional attack such as we have seen, our medical
system might become overloaded.
Therefore, we intend to address this issue further in our
final report.
·
And,
finally, we have focused a great deal of attention on the use of
the Armed Forces, their appropriate role and how they should be
used. We expressly
recommended that the U.S. military not serve as the lead federal agency in responding to a domestic
terrorist action. Although it is generally accepted that events
could occur where the military needs to be engaged, particularly
the National Guard, nonetheless, we have expressed an abiding
caution about deploying a military response to a domestic
situation and only then in support of a civilian federal agency
like FEMA.
These
are the highlights of our work to date.
Our work is not yet complete, but we intend to make it so
in a short time. Our
next meeting will be held next week, on Monday, September 24,
where we will decide upon our final set of recommendations.
Among the topics we expect to
address in our final report are U.S. border security, cyber
terrorism, proper role of the military in domestic response
scenarios, and necessary medical strategies to plan for a
biological or chemical weapon.
I would like to focus your attention today on two central
recommendations that implicate the organization of government
agencies and coordination: first,
the creation of a “National Office for Combating Terrorism”
located in the White House with a direct report to the president,
and second, U.S. border security proposals that will require
unprecedented coordination of resources, intelligence and effort
between U.S. Customs and the Immigration & Naturalization
Service.
A White House “National Office for Combating
Terrorism”
Let me start by outlining the panel’s recommendation for
a National Office for Combating Terrorism in the White House.
As I mentioned earlier, we called for statutory creation of
a new National Office for Combating Terrorism to coordinate
national terrorism policy and preparedness in the Executive Branch
– located in the White House and directed by an individual with
high rank appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate.
Our panel’s review of the federal bureaucratic structure,
spread across numerous agencies vested with some responsibilities
for combating terrorism, revealed a structure that is
uncoordinated, complex, and confusing.
Our first report included a graphical depiction of the
numerous federal agencies and offices within those agencies that
have responsibilities touching upon terrorist threats.
Our research indicated that attempts to create a federal
focal point for coordination with state and local officials –
such as the National Domestic Preparedness Office – have met
with little success. Moreover,
many state and local officials believe that federal programs
intended to assist at their levels are often created and
implemented without sufficient consultation.
We concluded that the current bureaucratic structure lacks
the requisite authority and accountability to make policy changes
and impose the discipline necessary among the numerous federal
agencies involved.
Therefore,
we have recommended creation of the National Office for Combating
Terrorism to serve as a senior level coordinating entity in the
Executive Office of the President. The office would be vested with responsibility for developing
both domestic and international
policy as well as coordinating the Nation’s vast
counter-terrorism programs and budgets.
There
is an important distinction here.
Our proposal is an office located in the White House,
reporting directly to the President of the United States – not a
separate agency that competes for turf against other agencies and
even Cabinet Secretaries. Instead,
this office will invoke the direct authority of the President to
coordinate various agencies, receive sensitive intelligence and
military information, and deal directly with Congress and state
and local governments.
·
First and
foremost, the office’s principal task will be to develop a
comprehensive national strategy that is approved by the President
and updated annually to respond to the latest intelligence.
The national strategy will address the full range of
domestic and international terrorism deterrence, prevention,
preparedness, and response. The
approach to the domestic strategy should be “bottom up,”
developed in close coordination with local, state and other
federal agencies.
·
Second, the
office should ensure that sufficient resources are allocated to
support execution of the national strategy, and should be vested
with budgetary control over significant counter-terrorism
resources for domestic preparedness.
(However, the U.S. strategy for detection and deterrence,
prevention and response for terrorist acts outside the United States should remain vested with the Department
of State.)
The office’s budget
authority should include responsibility to conduct a full review
of federal agency programs and budgets to ensure compliance with
the programmatic and funding priorities established in the
approved national strategy and to eliminate conflicts and
unnecessary duplication among agencies.
·
Third, the
office should coordinate foreign and domestic terrorism-related
intelligence activities, including the development of national net
assessments of terrorist threats.
A critical task will be to develop, in concert with the
intelligence community, policies and protocols for dissemination
of intelligence and other pertinent information regarding
terrorist threats to designated entities at all levels of
government – local, state and federal.
We also recommend that an Assistant Director for
Intelligence be appointed within the office to assume these
responsibilities, and to ensure strict adherence to applicable
civil rights and privacy laws and regulations in the context of
“domestic collection” of intelligence.
·
Third, the
office should be vested authority to review state and geographical
area strategic plans for consistency and effectiveness in
fulfilling the national strategy.
That review authority will allow the office to identify
gaps and deficiencies in the national strategy as well as federal
programs, and to assess the need for additional federal funds to
assist state and local governments.
·
Fourth, it
would be the responsibility of the National Office for Combating
Terrorism to propose new federal programs or changes to existing
federal programs, including federal statutory or regulatory
authority, to ensure an effective national strategy.
·
Fifth, we
recommend that an Assistant Director for Domestic Preparedness
Programs be appointed to direct coordination of federal, state and
local response agencies, funding and programs – especially in
the areas of “crisis” and “consequence” planning,
training, exercises, and equipment.
·
Sixth, we
recommend that an Assistant Director for Health and Medical
Programs be appointed to coordinate federal health and medical
programs addressed at terrorism response with state and local
health officials, emergency medical services, public and private
hospitals, and emergency management offices.
·
Seventh,
the office should coordinate research, development, test and
evaluation programs directed at counter-terrorism.
·
Eighth, we
recommend that the national office serve as the information
clearinghouse and central federal point of contact for state and
local entities. We
have heard many comments about the difficulties encountered by
state and local government officials to navigate the maze of the
federal bureaucracy. The
national office should serve as a “one-stop-shop” for state
and local agencies in their efforts to counter terrorist threats.
Before
leaving this subject, let me suggest a few attributes the new
National Office for Combating Terrorism must should possess.
Most importantly, the Director must be politically
accountable and responsible.
Therefore, he must be vested with sufficient authority to
accomplish the office’s goals.
Congress must have someone to go to assess out Nation’s
preparedness. That is why we have recommended the Director be appointed by
the President, confirmed by the Senate, and serve in a
“cabinet-level” position.
The
office should have sufficient budget authority and programmatic
oversight to influence the resource allocation process and ensure
program compatibility and effectiveness. The best way to instill this attribute is to give the
Director a “certification” power – a process by which he
could formally “decertify” all or part of an agency’s budget
as “non-compliant” with the national strategy.
This “certification” power would act as a veto of all
or any part of any agency’s budget, but would be sufficiently
powerful to effect the coordination responsibility.
Finally, while the National Office should be vested with
specific program coordination and budget authority, it is not our
intention that it be given actual “operational” control over
various federal agency activities.
Under our paradigm, the office would not be “in charge”
of response operations in the event of an actual terrorist attack.
It’s job will be ensuring existing bureaucracies are prepared to
respond in a coordinated and comprehensive manner.
According, the word “czar” is inappropriate to describe
this office.
U.S. Border Security
While
we are on the subject of government organization, I also would
like to offer the Committee a preview of one of the panel’s
upcoming recommendations for U.S. border security.
As many of you know, several of September 11 hijackers may
have entered the United States on forged visas or by car from
Canada. A truck
carrying explosive materials bound for Seattle for New Year’s
eve 2000 was interdicted at the Canadian border.
If
America is to be secure, we must have a coordinated policy of
immigration enforcement and border security, and it must address the
totality of all avenues of entry into the United States – land,
air, and sea. This
effort will require unprecedented coordination between the U.S.
Border Patrol, the Immigration & Naturalization Service, U.S.
Customs Service, the Coast Guard, and the Federal Aviation
Administration – as well as state and local law enforcement.
In
its previous two reports, this panel acknowledged that the laws
and traditions of the United States creating and maintaining a
very open society make us vulnerable to terrorist attacks.
Some statistics emphasize this stark reality:
·
Over
100,000 miles of national coastline
·
Almost 2000
miles of land border with Mexico, another 4000 miles with Canada,
most of it essentially open to transit
·
Almost 500
million people cross our borders annually
·
Over 127
million automobile crossings annually
·
Over 11.5
million truck crossings annually
·
Over 2.1
rail cars annually
·
Almost 1
million commercial and private aircraft enter annually
·
Over
200,000 ships annually dock in maritime
·
Over 5.8
million containers enter annually from maritime sources
The
movement of goods, people, and vehicles through our border
facilities is characterized by vast transportation, logistics, and
services systems that are extremely complex, essentially
decentralized, and almost exclusively owned by the private sector. Despite valiant efforts by personnel of the U.S. Customs
Service, the U.S. Coast Guard, the U.S. Immigration and
Naturalization Service (including the U.S. Border Patrol), the
Federal Aviation Administration, and other Federal entities, as
well as State and local enforcement authorities, the challenge is
seemingly insurmountable. Those
efforts are further hampered by a lack of full interagency
connectivity and information sharing.
With
adequate coordination of effort and resources – and primarily
through information sharing – these agencies could significantly
improve a seamless enforcement and detection system without unduly
hindering the flow of goods and people.
However, still, simply increasing enforcement of current
laws and regulations through existing mechanisms may not provide
the ultimate solution. That
activity could result in further delays at very busy ports of
entry. The likely
“domino” effect of further delays will generate opposition
from many U.S. commercial interests whose businesses depend on
carefully timed delivery of goods, political pressure from states
and localities whose job markets would likely be affected,
potential retaliation from foreign countries who export goods to
the United States, and increased complaints from the millions of
business and tourist passengers transiting our border—many of
whom are already unhappy about the queues at airports of entry.
Given
the nature and complexity of the problem, the panel recognizes
that we as a nation will not likely find the “100% solution”
for our borders. We
should, nevertheless, search for ways to make it harder to exploit
our borders for the purpose of doing harm—physical or
economic—to our citizens. The
confluence of these issues calls for new, innovative approaches
that will strike an appropriate and more effective balance between valid enforcement activities, the
interests of commerce, and civil liberties.
Among the Advisory
Panel’s upcoming recommendations to accomplish these objectives
are the following proposals:
·
First,
we must improve intelligence collection and dissemination between
and among agencies responsible for some aspect of border
protection. This
panel is strongly committed to the proposition that relevant,
timely intelligence is crucial in the campaign to combat
terrorism. That is
especially so in the arena of enhancing the security of our
borders. New and
better ways must be developed to track terrorist groups and their
activities through transportation and logistics systems. All
agencies with border responsibilities must be included as full
partners in the intelligence collection, analysis, and
dissemination process, as related to border security.
This process is a “two-way street;” all entities
involved must be willing to share information, horizontally and
vertically. This will
represent a departure from the current “culture” of many
agencies to cloister information.
The structure and procedures that the panel recommended in
its second report, for the establishment of intelligence oversight
through an advisory board under the National Office for Combating
terrorism could facilitate a new paradigm in this area.
The
fact is that no single framework exists to look at terrorist and
security threats across all the various agency functions.
And what is critically needed is connectivity
across agencies to create a virtual national data repository
of data that will serve as the focal point for the fusion and
distribution of information on all border security matters.
Although
some interagency agreements for border security do exist, notably
the Memorandum of Agreement on Maritime Domain Awareness among the
Department of Defense, the U.S. Coast Guard, the U.S. Immigration
and Naturalization Service, and the Department of State, all
affected agencies are not involved in a fully coordinated and
integrated process. Therefore,
we recommend that the Maritime Domain Awareness model be expanded
to create an interactive and fully-integrated database system for
“Border Security Awareness.”
It should include participation from all relevant U.S.
government agencies, and State and local partners.
Congress should mandate participation of all related
Federal agencies in this activity, and provide sufficient
resources to fund its implementation.
The development and implementation of such a system,
including appropriate resources for systems integration to be
provided by the Congress, can be accomplished by the National
Office for Combating Terrorism.
·
Second, a
necessary corollary to inter-agency intelligence sharing is the
need to expand intelligence sharing with state and local agencies
responsible for critical aspects of law enforcement and customs
checks. This concept
may break with “inside-the-beltway” culture, but state and
local agencies must be trusted with important intelligence and
information if our border security effort is to be successful.
The point is plain and simple:
The full, timely dissemination and sharing of information
among effected Federal, State, and local agencies will be critical
in preventing the movement of foreign terrorists and their weapons
across our borders.
·
Third, we
must foster intensive coordination between and among the relevant
agencies. Information
and intelligence sharing is just a start.
The next level of inter-agency cooperation will mean
coordinated operations between federal and state agencies with border
responsibilities. Again,
this coordination could be led by the National Office for
Combating Terrorism, which would bring to bear the power and
authority of the White House to establish a special inter-agency
advisory panel on border security, ensure cooperation and
eliminate turf struggles. That
entity could be an expansion of the Border Interdiction Committee,
formed in the late 1980s to address the problem of drug
trafficking across U.S. borders.
This advisory board can assist the director of the NOCT in
developing program and resource priorities as part of the national
strategy for combating terrorism and the related budget processes.
·
Fourth,
we should enhance sensor and other detection and warning systems
of the various agencies – but in a coordinated fashion to ensure
each agency’s system compliments the others’ systems.
Individual agencies have one or more activities underway
that are intended to enhance enforcement and interdiction
capabilities, through the use of static or mobile sensors and
other detection devices. Valuable
research and development is also underway in multiple agencies to
extend such capabilities, especially in the area of non-intrusive
inspection systems. There is, nevertheless, no comprehensive and
fully-vetted plan among related agencies for critical aspects of
such activities. Therefore,
the National Office for Combating Terrorism should coordinate a
plan for research and development among the agencies, and for
fielding and integration of sensor and other detection and warning
systems, as well as elevation of priority for the application of
resources for the execution of such a plan.
·
Finally,
no border security plan will be successful unless we improve our
cooperation with Mexico and Canada.
It
will be imperative for the U.S. to implement more comprehensive
agreements on combating terrorism with the governments of Mexico
and Canada. Some
agreements and protocols with both countries already exist, but
more needs to be done. We
know from open-source material and from other sources that Canada
has been a country of choice for certain elements who have engaged
or who may seek to engage in terrorist activities against the
United States. Unfortunately, the laws of Canada do not explicitly
make terrorist activities a crime per
se. As a result,
Canada has been unable to take action against certain individuals
who may, for example, be conspiring to perpetrate a terrorist
attack against the United States.
Country-to-country negotiations should be designed to
strengthen laws that will enhance our collective ability to deter,
prevent, and respond to terrorist activities, to exchange
information on terrorist activities, and to assist in the
apprehension of known terrorists before they can strike.
Conclusion
Mr.
Chairman, Senator Thompson, we must start preparing our Nation to
defend freedom within our borders today.
The President and the Congress face solemn decisions about
how we proceed and there is little time for deliberation.
The
members of the Advisory Panel to Assess Domestic Response
Capabilities for Terrorism Involving Weapons of Mass Destruction
are convinced, upon nearly three years of study, that there is an
immediate need for appointment of a senior person at the federal
level – in the White House – who both has the responsibility
and the authority to coordinating our vast national resources and
efforts – federal, state and local.
As
our great democratic institutions move forward toward a solution,
allow me to offer a couple of observations.
This is not a partisan political issue.
It transcends partisanship.
It is about the preservation of freedom and the American
way of life.
After a generation of
moral relativity an equivocation, let there be no debate or doubt
that the hijacking of four commercial airplanes and the tragedies
that followed on September 11 clearly demonstrated that evil
exists in our world.
However
we as a democracy decide to approach this evil force, we must
always remember that terrorism is tyranny.
Its aim is to strip away our rights and liberties and
replace them with fear. As Americans, it is our duty and our destiny to strike down
tyranny wherever it may arise.
We did in World War I, again in World War II, in Korea, and
later in Kuwait. The
battlefields and warriors change, but the enemy is always the
same.
In
the face of this evil, we will not be afraid, but strong. We will
not divide, but unite. We will not doubt, but affirm our faith in
freedom, each other, and the grace of God.
And freedom will prevail.
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