[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: George W. Bush (2006, Book II)]
[September 28, 2006]
[Pages 1713-1721]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks at a Luncheon for Gubernatorial Candidate Robert R. Riley in Birmingham, Alabama
September 28, 2006

    Thanks for coming. It is a joy to be back in Alabama, and I 
appreciate your warm welcome. I am proud to stand with one of the 
Nation's finest Governors and ask for your help in reelecting Bob Riley 
as Governor of Alabama.
    He deserves to be reelected because he's got a record he can run on. 
He has made

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you proud. He listens to the people. He shares your values for the good 
of Alabama and for the good of all citizens, regardless of their 
political party. Bob Riley needs to be reelected as your Governor.
    I'm proud to be here with Patsy, first lady 
of the great State of Alabama. Riley and I married well, and we're both 
wise enough to listen to our wives. [Laughter] So Laura said, ``When you get down to Alabama, say hello to our 
friends on her behalf,'' and so I do. I bring greetings from Laura Bush, 
a wonderful mother, a fantastic wife, and a great First Lady for the 
United States of America. And Patsy, thank you for being here. Thank you 
for serving your State with dignity, just like Riley is serving the 
State with dignity.
    I'm also proud to recognize the candidate for the Lieutenant 
Governor, a man who will stand tall for the 
State of Alabama--[laughter]--my friend Luther Strange. I have gotten to 
know your State attorney general, Troy King. He is 
an accomplished attorney, who brings great credit to the office he 
holds. I can say without a doubt, he's the right candidate to serve as 
the State attorney for this great State of Alabama. Troy, thanks for 
serving; it was an honor to meet your wife, Paige. I want to thank the State auditor, Beth 
Chapman, who is with us here today. I thank 
Twinkle Cavanaugh, who is the 
chairman of the Alabama Republican Party, and I want to thank all the 
grass roots activists who have joined us here today.
    This is a fantastic fundraiser. The next thing that needs to be done 
is a fantastic grass roots effort to turn out the vote. For those of you 
who are stuffing the envelopes and putting up the signs and getting on 
the telephones, and turning people out to vote, I want to thank you in 
advance for what you're going to do for this excellent Governor.
    You win campaigns by having somebody who has got a vision and can 
carry the message, and you also win campaigns by finding your voters and 
turning them out. For all the grass roots activists here today, thanks 
for coming, and thanks for what you do.
    I want to thank the State and local officials who are here. Thanks 
for serving. I appreciate your willingness to be a public servant. I 
want to thank the Selma High School Choir. I appreciate you lending your 
beautiful voices to this important occasion.
    One of the most important jobs of a Governor is to set a tone for a 
State. Bob Riley and I share a philosophy about the role of government 
when it comes to the economy. The role of government is not to create 
wealth; the role of government is to create an environment in which the 
entrepreneurial spirit can flourish, in which small business grow to be 
big businesses, an environment in which people are able to find work.
    I was noticing that the unemployment rate in the great State of 
Alabama is 3.5 percent, which says Riley knows what he's doing when it 
comes time to this economy. When you have people working, it makes sense 
to put the man in charge of setting the tone for the State back in 
office.
    You know, one of the things Bob and I understand is that one way to 
grow the economy is to let people keep more of their own taxes. You see, 
we believe that when you've got more of your own money in your pocket to 
save, spend, or invest, the economy grows.
    He told me that he's running on cutting taxes, another reason to put 
him back in office as the Governor of Alabama. And I'm telling you, 
cutting taxes works.
    You might remember what this economy of ours has been through. We've 
been through a recession and corporate scandals, a terrorist attack, a 
war, hurricanes, and high gasoline prices. Yet we're growing, and we 
intend to keep growing. And the best way to keep growing is to keep the 
people's taxes low.
    The the tax cuts we passed are working, and it's a campaign issue as 
far as I'm concerned. There's no doubt in my mind that

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if the national Democrats had control of the House or the Senate, they'd 
raise your taxes. And there's no doubt in my mind raising your taxes 
will hurt this economy. The best way to keep the people in Alabama 
working and the best way to keep the people across this country working 
is to make the tax cuts we passed permanent.
    When I was the Governor of Texas, I used to tell people education is 
to a State what national defense is to the Federal Government. The 
single most important priority of a State is to make sure the people get 
educated. And Bob Riley has made the school system of Alabama his top 
priority, but he's made the school system in Alabama a priority in a 
different kind of way. See, he refuses to accept the status quo when he 
finds mediocrity or failure.
    You know, I was talking to Margaret Spellings. She's my buddy from the State of Texas who is now 
the Secretary of Education. And Margaret Spellings, if she were here, 
would tell you that Alabama has some of the most innovative programs in 
the United States of America when it comes to making sure every single 
child gets an education. You got a Governor who is an education Governor 
and needs to be returned to your State capitol.
    He is spending money on schools, and that's important. But he also 
understands money alone won't bring excellence to the classrooms. And 
that's why he has set high standards, and that's why he insists upon 
strong accountability measures. The best way to achieve educational 
excellence for every child in your State is to measure, is to determine 
whether a child is learning how to read, write, and add and subtract, 
and if not, correct problems early before it's too late.
    I'm proud of the standards your Governor has set. I'm proud to call 
my friend an educational innovator. I'm proud that he has made reading a 
top priority. I'm proud he's challenging the soft bigotry of low 
expectations. I'm proud he's working hard to make sure no child is left 
behind in the State of Alabama.
    Riley and I just went over to--excuse me--Governor Riley--
[laughter]--and I went over to Hoover, Alabama, today, the home of the 
mighty Bucs, the number one high school football team in the United 
States. That's kind of hard for a Texan to say. [Laughter] But we went 
over for a different reason, because we both understand that in order 
for America to remain competitive in the 21st century, in order for 
Alabama to remain competitive in the 21st century, we must diversify 
away from foreign sources of oil.
    And so we went to a E-85 ethanol distribution place. See, what 
happened is, is that the fine mayor of Hoover 
and its city council decided that they were going to use ethanol as the 
primary fuel for their police automobiles. That's called innovation. 
It's called thinking ahead.
    I found it to be really interesting to talk to the officers who 
drive the vehicles that are run on fuel that is 85 percent ethanol, in 
other words, fuel made from corn. So I said to the guy, do you--see, he has a choice, he can either use 
gasoline or ethanol. I said, ``Which one do you use?'' He says, ``I like 
the ethanol.'' I said, ``Why?'' He said, ``It's got a lot of get up and 
go to it.'' In other words, it works well.
    What we're beginning to see is a change in how we fuel our 
automobiles. We're spending a lot of money at the Federal level, your 
money, to try to advance new technologies to make us less dependent on 
oil. It's in the national interests that we become less dependent on oil 
from overseas. After all, a lot of the oil we get is from parts of the 
world that don't particularly care for us right now.
    I look forward to the day when more and more of you have flex-fuel 
vehicles and you can go and make the decision as to whether or not you 
want to use ethanol as the primary source of energy in your automobile 
or gasoline. I look forward to the day when I can say to the American

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people, ``Because we've got more corn growing, we're less dependent on 
foreign sources of oil.'' I look forward to the day when you can use 
wood chips from Alabama trees as the feedstock for ethanol. I look 
forward to the day when we have these great breakthroughs of research 
and technology done right here in Auburn University to say to the 
American people, the research we're doing today means your children are 
going to be less dependent on oil in the future.
    And Bob Riley is a partner in encouraging diversification away from 
hydrocarbons that we import from overseas. And I appreciate his stance. 
I appreciate his vision. He's got a vision for the people of Alabama, 
and he's got the skill and capability of implementing that vision. He's 
done an excellent job for the people. And I want to thank you for 
supporting him to put him back in office. It's good for this State that 
Bob Riley is the Governor. I want to talk about--I want to spend a 
little time on what else occupies my mind, other than making sure our 
economy grows. And it's this: My most solemn responsibility and the most 
solemn duty of the Federal Government, as a matter of fact governments 
at all levels, is to protect the American people.
    We are a nation at war. I wish I could report differently, but you 
need to have a President who sees the world the way it is, not the way 
somebody would hope it would be. In order to protect this people, we 
must understand the nature of the threats we face. We face an enemy that 
is brutal, an enemy that is determined, an enemy that has a set of 
beliefs that is the opposite of our beliefs.
    I'll never forget the lessons of September the 11th, 2001, and I 
will continue to use, as I vowed then to the American people, every 
element of national power to defeat the terrorists and to defend the 
freedom of the United States of America.
    And that starts with making sure those responsible for defending you 
have all the tools necessary to do so. As the Commander in Chief of the 
finest group of men and women produced in this country, I'll make you 
this pledge: Our troops will have whatever it takes to do the job we 
have asked them to do.
    And we have got to make sure that our intelligence officers have the 
tools they need to protect you and our law enforcement officers have the 
tools they need to protect you. So working with the Congress, we passed 
what was called the PATRIOT Act, an act that broke down barriers and 
walls that prevented the intelligence community from sharing information 
with the law enforcement community.
    You see, we recognize that in order to protect you, all elements of 
national government must be able to communicate freely to defeat this 
enemy. If somebody that we think is Al Qaida or an Al Qaida affiliate 
gets on the telephone and is making a phone call into the United States, 
we want to know why, in order to protect the American people.
    In order to make sure we get the information necessary to protect 
you--see, this is a different kind of war. We cannot measure the enemy's 
progress based upon the movement of tanks or airplanes. These people 
hide in remote regions of the world and then strike with lethality, as 
we learned firsthand in our country.
    And therefore we must find kernels of information that then will 
enable us to track them down and bring them to justice before they hurt 
Americans. And that's why it's essential that I created a program with 
the professionals in the Central Intelligence Agency to detain and 
question key terrorist leaders and operatives that were captured on the 
battlefield. As a result of this program, we have--we've learned 
information that enabled us to save American lives.
    I also believed it was important to set up military commissions that 
will enable us to bring to justice the people that ordered the attacks 
on the United States of America. The Supreme Court said, you must

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work with the legislature to achieve these objectives, and we're doing 
just that.
    Last night--yesterday afternoon, the House of Representatives voted 
on the legislation we put forward to create military commissions and to 
continue that vital program of questioning detainees. The bill passed, 
but I want to remind you about the vote. The bill passed over the 
objections of 160 House Democrats, including the entire Democrat 
leadership.
    We must give our professionals the tools necessary to protect the 
American people in this war on terror, and those in the House of 
Representatives were wrong to vote against this bill.
    Ours is an important job to protect you. We have to be right 100 
percent of the time, and the enemy only has to be right once. And that's 
why it's important that we do the--pass the laws that we've asked the 
Senate and the House to pass. And that's also why it's important that we 
must defeat the enemy overseas so we do not have to face them here at 
home.
    And there's a lot of debate in Washington about this war on terror. 
And perhaps you heard something about what's called a National 
Intelligence Estimate. The National Intelligence Estimate is a 
classified document that, in this case, analyzed the threat we faced 
from terrorists and extremists.
    As you know, parts of that classified document were recently leaked 
to the press, a sure sign that elections are right around the corner. 
Some in the other party have been quoting selectively from the document 
for partisan political gain, and so I felt that it was important for 
people to actually see what was in the document, and so I declassified 
it.
    And I'd like to share some thoughts about what was in the NIE with 
you today. It offers a frank assessment of where we are in the war on 
terror. It confirms that we face a determined and capable enemy. It 
lists four underlying factors that are fueling the extremist movement: 
longstanding grievances such as corruption and injustice, or fear of 
Western domination; the second such factor was the jihad in the Iraq; 
the third was the slow pace of reform in Muslim nations; and the fourth 
factor that the leaders of this extremist movement were using to recruit 
was anti-Americanism.
    It concludes that the terrorists are exploiting all these factors to 
enhance their movement. The debate over this document raises really an 
important question about the war on terror: Should we be on the offense 
or not? Some in Washington--some decent people, patriotic people--feel 
like we should not be on the offensive in this war on terror. Here's 
what a senior Democrat in Congress put it 
when she was discussing Iraq. She said, ``The President says that 
fighting them there makes it less likely we'll have to fight them here. 
The opposite is true.'' She went on to say, ``Because we are fighting 
them there, it may become more likely that we'll have to fight them 
here.''
    History tells us that logic is false. We didn't create terrorism by 
fighting terrorism. Iraq is not the reason why the terrorists are at war 
against us. Our troops were not in Iraq when the terrorists first 
attacked the World Trade Center. They were not in Iraq when they blew up 
our Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. They were not in Iraq when they 
bombed the USS Cole. And we were not in Iraq when the extremists killed 
nearly 3,000 of our people on September the 11th, 2001.
    Five years after the 9/11 attacks, some in Washington, DC, still 
don't understand the nature of the enemy. The only way to protect our 
citizens at home is to keep the pressure on the enemy across the world. 
When terrorists spend their days working to avoid capture, they are less 
able to plot and plan and execute new attacks. We will stay on the 
offense. We will fight them across the world, and we will stay in this 
fight until the fight is won.

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    In order to win this war, we need to understand that the terrorists 
and extremists are opportunists. They will grab onto any cause to incite 
hatred and to justify the killing of innocent men, women, and children. 
If we weren't in Iraq, they would be using our relationship and 
friendship with Israel as a reason to recruit, or the Crusades, or 
cartoons as a reason to commit murder. They recruit based upon lies and 
excuses, and they murder because of their raw desire for power. They 
hope to impose their dominion over the broader Middle East and establish 
a radical Islamic empire where millions are ruled according to their 
hateful ideology. We know this because Al Qaida has told us.
    The terrorist Zawahiri, number two 
man in the Al Qaida team--Al Qaida network, he said, we'll proceed with 
several incremental goals. The first stage is to expel the Americans 
from Iraq; the second stage is to establish an Islamic authority, then 
develop it and support it until it achieves the level of caliphate; the 
third stage, extend the jihad wave to secular countries neighboring 
Iraq; and the fourth stage, the clash with Israel.
    This is the words of the enemy. The President of the United States 
and the Congress must listen carefully to what the enemy says in order 
to be able to protect you. It makes sense for us to take their words 
seriously, if our most important job is the security of the United 
States. Mr. Zawahiri has laid out their 
plan. That's why they attacked us on September the 11th. That's why they 
fight us in Iraq today. And that is why they must be defeated.
    Some Democrats in Congress say that we should not be fighting the 
terrorists in Iraq; it was a mistake to go into Iraq in the first place. 
I believe these Democrats need to answer a simple question: Do they 
really believe that we would be better off if Saddam Hussein were still in power? In a recent interview, the top 
Democrat on the Intelligence Committee was asked this very question. And his answer was, ``Yes, 
yes, and, yes.''
    If this is what the Democrats think, they need to make this case to 
the American people; they need to make the case that the world would be 
better off it Saddam Hussein were still in 
power. If Saddam Hussein were still in power, he would still be 
sponsoring terror and paying families of suicide bombers. If he were 
still in power, he would still be pursuing weapons of mass destruction. 
He would still be killing his own people. He would still be firing at 
our pilots. He would still be defying the United Nations. He would still 
be bilking the Oil-for-Food Programme and using one of the largest oil 
reserves in the world to threaten Western economies and to fuel his 
ambitions.
    After the attacks of September the 11th, it became clear that the 
United States of America must confront threats before they come and hurt 
us. Saddam Hussein's regime was a serious 
threat, a risk the world could not afford to take. America, Iraqis, and 
the world are safer because Saddam Hussein is not in power.
    In a recent series of speeches, I made it clear that we're in the 
early hours of a long struggle for civilization. I have made it clear 
that we're in the ideological struggle of the 21st century. I've also 
made it clear that the safety of the American people depends on the 
outcome of the battle in the streets of Baghdad.
    I strongly believe that Iraq is a central front in the war on 
terror. The Democrats may not think so, but Usama bin Laden does. Here are the words of bin Laden, ``I now address 
the whole Islamic nation: Listen and understand. The most serious issue 
today for the whole world is this third world war is raging in Iraq.'' 
He calls it ``a war of destiny between infidelity and Islam.'' He says, 
``The whole world is watching this war,'' and that it will end in 
``victory and glory or misery and humiliation.''

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    For Al Qaida, Iraq is not a distraction from their war on America; 
it is a central battlefield where there's--outcome of the struggle will 
be decided.
    The NIE I quoted earlier says this about Iraq. It said, ``Perceived 
jihadist success there,'' in Iraq, ``would inspire more fighters to 
continue the struggle elsewhere.'' It also says that ``Should jihadists 
leaving Iraq perceive themselves, and be perceived, to have failed, we 
judge fewer fighters will be inspired to carry on the fight.''
    Democrats in Washington have been quoting the NIE a lot in recent 
days, but you don't hear them quoting that part of the document. The 
Democrats can't have it both ways. Either they believe that Iraq is a 
distraction from the war on terror or they agree with the intelligence 
community and the terrorists themselves that the outcome of Iraq is 
important in the war on terror. Truth is, the Democrats are using the 
NIE to mislead the American people and justify their policy of 
withdrawal from Iraq.
    The American people need to know what withdrawal from Iraq would 
mean. By withdrawing from Iraq before the job is done, we would be doing 
exactly what the extremists and terrorists want. The terrorists' entire 
strategy is based on the belief that America is weak and does not have 
the stomach for the long fight. Bin Laden 
has called American withdrawals from places like Beirut and Somalia as 
proof that if the terrorists are patient, America will lose her nerve 
and withdraw in disgrace.
    The greatest danger is not that America's presence in Iraq is 
drawing new recruits to the terrorist cause; the greatest danger is that 
an American withdrawal from Iraq would embolden the terrorists and help 
them find new recruits to carry out even more destructive attacks on the 
American homeland. And that is why the United States of America will 
stand with the brave Iraqis and defeat the terrorists in Iraq.
    The stakes are high in this war. It's really important that the 
United States of America understands the nature of this enemy and 
understands what it would mean to leave Iraq before the job is done. If 
we were to abandon this young democracy to the extremists, imagine what 
other reformers and people of moderation would think about the United 
States of America. If we were to abandon our mission in Iraq where many 
have sacrificed, imagine what the enemy would think about the United 
States of America and our will.
    If we were to abandon Iraq and create a vacuum in that country and 
that country were then taken over by the extremists, make no mistake 
about it, they would have mighty assets to use in order to inflict 
economic pain on the United States of America. We're not going to let 
this happen. America is a nation that keeps its commitments to those who 
long for liberty and want to live in peace. America is a nation that 
will keep its commitment to make sure that you're secure. America is a 
nation that does not retreat in the face of thugs and assassins.
    We're going to help the Iraqi people. Remember, 12 million of them 
voted in elections last December. That probably seems like a decade ago 
to you, but when the history is finally written, it will be just a 
comma. Twelve million people stood up in the face of assassins and car 
bombers and said, ``We want to be free.''
    I'm not surprised. I was pleased. I'm not surprised because I 
believe in this principle, a principle which should be a guiding light 
of American foreign policy: There is an Almighty, and a gift of that 
Almighty to every man, woman, and child on the face of the Earth is 
freedom. I believe deep in the soul of every person is the desire to 
live in liberty, and I know that liberty will yield the peace we want 
for generations to come.
    From the beginning of the struggle, I've made it clear that we will 
defend this country by giving people the tools needed, that we'll defend 
America by staying on the offense, that we will find the terrorists and

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bring them to justice so they can't hurt us here at home. But I've also 
made it clear that defeating the terrorists in the long run requires 
defeating their hateful ideology.
    The NIE explicitly states, the National Intelligence Estimate, that 
I have been discussing and has been widely discussed in the newspapers 
states this, that the terrorists greatest vulnerability is that their 
ideology is ``unpopular with the vast majority of Muslims.'' People want 
to be free. People want to be able to express themselves freely. Mothers 
in the Muslim world share the same thing as mothers here; they want 
their children to grow up in a peaceful world.
    And that's why it's essential that the United States of America 
stand with moderates and reformers and peaceful people, millions of men 
and women in the Muslim world who want a normal life and a more hopeful 
future for their children and their grandchildren. And as this powerful 
majority gains control over the destiny--over their destiny through the 
democratic progress, they will marginalize the radicals and extremists 
and their hateful vision of the world.
    The transition from tyranny to democracy is tough work, but it's 
necessary work. It's the calling of history. It's the challenge to our 
generation to defend America and to lay the foundation of peace for 
generations to come. The extremists and the radicals will exploit these 
difficulties in every way they can. They will try to shake our will. 
They will use the murder of innocent men and women and children in order 
to convince America that the fight isn't worth it. Yet in the long run, 
America, if we keep our faith in our principles, will prevail.
    Encouraging the rise of free societies across the broader Middle 
East is the only way to overcome the threat of terrorism and to protect 
the American people in the long run. We owe it to a generation of 
children to come to do the hard work now. Imagine a Middle East where 
there's competing factions of extremism. Imagine a Middle East where the 
radicals control oil. Imagine a Middle East where there's an armed 
theocracy with a nuclear weapon. Fifty years from now, people will say, 
``Couldn't they see it; why couldn't they see the threat?''
    Now is the time for the United States of America to lay the 
foundation of peace, to confront the challenges we have square on, to 
protect our country, to do our duty so that generations will look back 
and say, ``Thank God this generation of Americans was willing to serve 
and serve strong.''
    The stakes in this war are high, and so are the stakes this 
November. Americans face the choice between two parties with two 
different attitudes on this war on terror. Five years after 9/11, the 
worst attack on American homeland in our history, the Democrats offer 
nothing but criticism and obstruction and endless second-guessing. The 
party of FDR and the party of Harry Truman has become the party of cut-
and-run.
    Our party's record is clear. We see the stakes. We understand the 
nature of the enemy. We know that the enemy wants to attack us again. We 
will not wait to respond to the enemy. We're not going to wait for them 
to attack us in order to respond. We will fight them wherever they make 
a stand. We will settle for nothing less than victory.
    Thanks for coming. God bless.

Note: The President spoke at 1:34 p.m. at the Birmingham Jefferson 
Convention Complex. In his remarks, he referred to Mayor Tony Petelos of 
Hoover, AL; former President Saddam Hussein of Iraq; and Usama bin 
Laden, leader of the Al Qaida terrorist organization.

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