[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: George W. Bush (2006, Book II)]
[October 2, 2006]
[Pages 1743-1749]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks at a Reception for Congressional Candidate Dean Heller in Reno, Nevada
October 2, 2006

    Thank you all for coming. It's good to be back in Reno. I appreciate 
the invitation. I'm here to say as clearly as I can, Dean Heller is the 
right person for the United States Congress. And I want to thank you for 
helping him.
    I appreciate the fantastic fundraiser. It's a good sign, Dean, when 
your friends and neighbors are willing to put a little hard-earned cash 
into the hat in order to help you. [Laughter] But he's going to need 
more than your money; he's going to need your time. And so coming down 
the stretch, I call on the grassroots activists and those who have been 
participating in campaigns to put up the signs and go to your houses of 
worship or your community centers and say, ``We've got a good man in 
Dean Heller; he loves his family; he loves his country; he loves the 
people of the Second Congressional District. Let's send him to 
Washington, DC.''

[[Page 1744]]

    All he's got to do is get his family to go to work for him. 
[Laughter] I met a bunch of them today. I'm really proud to be with--
[laughter]--with Lynne and the four children. I like a man who knows 
his priorities. We need people in Washington who have got the right 
priorities. And the priorities--he and I share a priority: our faith, 
our family, and our country.
    Now, I wasn't Dean's first choice. [Laughter] He wisely had put in a 
request for Laura--[laughter]--who sends her love 
and her best to all our friends out here in Reno, in Nevada. We're 
blessed with friends. I wouldn't be standing here without the people of 
this good State voting for me, not once but twice. And in selecting me, 
you selected a really fine person to be the First Lady. I can't tell you 
how proud I am of Laura. I am a lucky man that she said yes when I asked 
her to marry me, and some of her friends in Texas wondered whether it 
was a wise decision or not, but we're doing great.
    And we're really proud--I'm proud to be here. She, like me, understands Dean Heller will make a great 
United States Congressman. I want to thank his predecessor, Jim 
Gibbons. I've been honored to work with Jim on 
behalf of the people. Another predecessor is here; Barbara 
Vucanovich is with us. Barbara, it's good 
to see you. I'm proud you're here. Mother and 
Dad send their best. [Laughter] This 
Barbara knows the other Barbara. [Laughter]
    I want to thank Kenny Guinn and 
Dema for joining us today. Kenny Guinn has been a 
great Governor for the State of Nevada. We're proud to call him friend, 
and I'm proud to call Dema friend. You know, one of the interesting 
things that we get to do is to share the White House with our friends 
from around the country. We've had the Governor and his wife spend the 
night with us when the National Governors were in town. And I remember 
Kenny walking around the White House saying, ``My goodness, I can't 
believe I'm here.'' [Laughter] And then he looked at me. [Laughter]
    I hope you all support Jim Gibbons to 
replace Governor Kenny Guinn. And now that 
I'm going down the election roster and--make sure you put Ensign back in too; he's a great United States Senator.
    I want to thank Brian Krolicki; he's 
going to be the Lieutenant Governor of the State of Nevada. Thanks for 
coming, Brian. We've got the mayor here, Bob Cashell. Bob, good to see you again. Mr. Mayor, proud you're 
here. And all the local officials--it's a good sign when the local 
officials are coming. It's when they stay away from the rallies, is when 
you get nervous. [Laughter]
    I want to thank you all. It really is important you're here. 
Obviously, this is a race that my administration considers to be an 
important race. That's why I got on the airplane after meeting with the 
Prime Minister of Turkey to come out 
here and help Dean.
    I want to thank Troy Marston; he led the 
Pledge of Allegiance--Private 1st Class, 3d Brigade, 101st Airborne, 
recently returned from Iraq. It is an honor to be the Commander in Chief 
of the finest military in the world. And the reason we're the finest 
military in the world is because of the men and women who have 
volunteered to wear the uniform of the United States of America. And 
being--one of your jobs and one of my jobs is to make sure our troops 
have all that is necessary to do their job and protect the United States 
of America.
    I've been looking forward to this campaign because it gives me a 
chance to travel around the country making it clear there are 
significant differences in what we believe and what the other bunch 
believes. You take taxes, for example. You know, Dean talked about the 
fact that when we came in, we had a recession and then there was a 
terrorist attack and then we went to war and there was corporate 
scandals; there was hurricanes and high gasoline

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prices. And yet this economy is growing. And the reason it's growing, 
and the primary reason in my mind it's growing is because we cut the 
taxes on the working people; we cut the taxes on the small-business 
owners; we cut taxes on families with children.
    We put an end to the marriage penalty--or started to put an end to 
the marriage penalty. I really don't understand a tax code that 
penalizes marriage. [Laughter] We ought to be encouraging marriage in 
the United States. The tax cuts we passed have worked.
    And this election campaign is one in which the people have got a 
stark choice. You listen to those Democrats in Washington talk. I don't 
know how they're talking in Nevada, but I can tell how they're talking 
in Washington. And they're saying, ``Well, we're not going to--we're 
going to let these tax cuts expire,'' see, hoping the American people 
don't pay attention to those words.
    See, if you let the tax cuts expire--in other words, if you don't 
make the tax cuts permanent--it means your taxes are going to go up. 
It's a tax increase. The way I like to put it is, if the Democrats take 
control of the United States Congress, they're going to have their hand 
in your pocket; they're going to be running up your taxes. Raising the 
taxes on the people who work for a living, raising the taxes on the 
farmers and ranchers, raising the taxes on the small-business owners is 
bad economic policy. And that's why we need Dean Heller in the United 
States Congress.
    Oh, you'll hear them tell you up there, or over there, they'll say, 
``Well, we need to raise taxes just on some of you in order to balance 
the budget.'' That's not the way Washington, DC, works. They'll raise 
your taxes, and they'll figure out new ways to spend your money. The 
best way to balance the budget is to keep progrowth economic policies in 
place so this economy grows and to prioritize how we spend your money. 
And the priorities I've set for the United States Congress is winning 
this war on terror and making sure we've got what it takes to defend the 
American people.
    You know, it's amazing what happens when you grow the economy. See, 
cutting taxes is counterintuitive for some in Washington, but when you 
reduce taxes, it causes the economy to grow. And when the economy grows, 
there's more tax revenues coming in. And that's what's happened 
recently. And that's why we're cutting the deficit in half prior to the 
goal I set in 2009. We need fiscally responsible people in Washington, 
DC. And Dean Heller will be a fine Congressman when it comes to watching 
your money.
    We need people in Washington, DC, who understand that we need to 
make sure health care is available and affordable. Now, there's an 
interesting debate up there in the Nation's Capital, and it's this: who 
best to decide how to make decisions for health care, who best to make 
that decision--the Federal Government, or the doctors and patients? We 
believe that the doctors and patients should be making the health care 
decisions in the United States of America. And one way to make sure 
health care is available and affordable is to do something about these 
junk lawsuits that are running good doctors out of practice.
    Now, I'm looking forward to working with Dean on good domestic 
policy that keeps this economy growing and keeps the power--
decisionmaking power in the hands of the people. And I'm looking forward 
to working with him to do our most solemn duty, and that's to protect 
you.
    You know, when I ran in 2000--I remember campaigning here--you know, 
I didn't want to be a war President. As a matter of fact, anybody who 
says, ``Vote for me; I want to be a war President''--don't vote for him. 
[Laughter] No one should ever wish that. But an enemy declared war on 
us, a war we didn't want, but it's a war we must engage. September the 
11th made it abundantly clear that the

[[Page 1746]]

most solemn responsibility of the Federal Government is to protect the 
American people.
    We're fighting an enemy that knows no rules. They're inhumane. They 
are evil people who have taken the religion and kill in the name of that 
religion to achieve geopolitical objectives. They're bound by a common 
ideology. They want to establish a caliphate that ranges from Indonesia 
to Spain. I'm not making this up. I'm simply repeating that which we 
have learned about the enemy from their own words.
    You can't negotiate with these people. Therapy is not going to work. 
[Laughter] The best way to deal with this enemy is to bring them to 
justice before they hurt the American people again.
    You know, it's a difficult task to protect the homeland, because 
we've got to be right 100 percent of the time, and these killers have 
got to be right once. And therefore, I thought it was important to make 
sure that those on the frontline of fighting terror and the extremists 
had all the tools necessary to protect the American people.
    And that's why I called upon Congress to eliminate the walls and 
barriers that had arisen over time between the intelligence services and 
the criminal justice people, so they can share intelligence that is 
necessary to protect you. And that's why I thought it was important to 
set up a program that said, if Al Qaida or an Al Qaida affiliate is 
making a phone call into the United States of America, we need to know 
why in order to protect the American people.
    And I want our fellow citizens to look at who voted for those 
proposals and what political party voted against them. There's a clear 
difference of opinion about how to protect this homeland.
    You know, recently, we just had an important debate in Washington, 
DC. It's a debate over whether or not the Central Intelligence Agency 
should have a program that enabled our professionals to question high-
value detainees to determine if they had information that could help 
protect the homeland. Obviously, I thought that was an important 
program. I submitted the bill after a speech in the East Room of the 
White House. I submitted that bill to the Congress. See, I understand 
the nature of the information we received from people such as Khalid 
Sheikh Mohammed; he is the mastermind 
of the September the 11th attacks.
    I'll be signing that bill pretty soon. The Congress passed the bill, 
but I want you all to remember, when you go to the polls here in Nevada, 
what political party supported the President to make sure we had the 
tools necessary to protect the American people, and which political 
party didn't.
    I have made the decision that the best way to protect the American 
people is to get on the offense against this enemy and stay on the 
offense. There is a difference of opinion in Washington. If you listen 
closely to some of the leaders of the Democrat Party, it sounds like 
they think the best way to protect the American people is, wait until 
we're attacked again. That's not the way it's going to be under my 
administration. We will stay on the offense, we will defeat the enemy 
overseas so we do not have to face them here at home.
    And it's hard work, but it's necessary work. It's the calling of the 
21st century. It's the call of a generation to determine whether we have 
the will and the vision to protect the American people.
    Now, the lesson I have learned from September the 11th was two--
one--many, but two of the most notable ones were, if you find somebody 
harboring a terrorist, they're equally as guilty as the terrorists and 
must be held to account. And that's why we removed the Taliban from 
Afghanistan and freed 25 million people from the clutches of a barbaric 
regime.
    And I saw a threat in Iraq, and so did Members of the United States 
Congress and people on the United Nations Security Council. Saddam 
Hussein was a state sponsor of terror. He had 
killed thousands of his own people. He had used weapons of

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mass destruction. He was a sworn enemy of the United States. He paid 
families of suicide bombers. He was a threat, and the United Nations 
said that loud and clear. It was his choice to make, of whether or not 
he wanted war. He chose war, and the world is better off without Saddam 
Hussein in power.
    And I think it's a legitimate question to ask candidates running for 
Congress or United States Senators who have been critical of policy, 
whether or not they think the world would be better off with Saddam 
Hussein in power. You know, when this 
question was asked to a senior member of the Intelligence Committee, the 
Democrat member, he 
said, ``Yes, the world would be better off, given the world today, with 
Saddam Hussein in power.''
    Well, I just see it differently. I think it's important we take 
threats before they come home to hurt us. America cannot wait to be 
attacked again. In order to protect the United States of America, we 
must stay on the offense, and we will do so.
    The other thing you hear coming out of the Nation's Capital is 
whether Iraq is a distraction on the war on terror: You know, it's not 
part of the war on terror. I happen to think it's a central front in the 
war on terror. Success in Iraq will help make this country more secure. 
Failure in Iraq will mean that we will have left behind a treacherous 
world for children and our grandchildren.
    But if you don't take my word, take the word of Usama bin Laden or Mr. Zawahiri 
about the importance of Iraq. The number one and two of Al Qaida have 
made it clear that Iraq is the central front in the war on terror, and 
their ambitions are to drive the United States out of Iraq and to 
abandon the 12 million people who went to the polls and to say it's not 
worth it. They believe it's worth it. Al Qaida thinks it's necessary in 
order to defeat America. They want us to leave so they can have a safe 
haven from which to plot and plan new attacks against the United States 
of America.
    Imagine a world where moderate governments have been toppled by 
extremists and extremists get ahold of oil. If you think it was tough at 
$70 a barrel, imagine what it will be like when these extremists get 
ahold of a valuable resource and say to the free world, ``Do it our way, 
or we're going to have an unbelievable economic peril.'' And couple with 
that an Iran with a nuclear weapon, and 20 or 30 years from now, the 
world will look back and say, ``What happened to America? How come they 
couldn't see the threat?''
    The threat is real. We will help those 12 million people who 
demanded freedom in Iraq achieve a stable democracy that can govern 
itself, defend itself, and sustain itself, and America and generations 
of Americans will be more secure.
    You know, people ask me all the time, do you really think people in 
the Middle East want to be free? It's a legitimate question, I guess. 
But it belies the fact that we believe in the universality of freedom. 
Freedom is not just an American possession. It's not our gift to the 
world. I happen to believe there is an Almighty, and I believe one of 
the great gifts of that Almighty is the desire to be free, to every man, 
woman, and child on the face of the Earth.
    So in the short term, our strategy is clear: We will stay on the 
offense; we will bring people to justice before they can hurt us again. 
In the long term, we will defeat the ideology of hatred with an ideology 
of hope.
    I have made it clear to the American people, I view the struggle 
we're in as the great ideological struggle of the 21st century. It's 
akin to the cold war in some ways. It is the difference between tyranny 
and freedom, between moderation and extremism. Make no mistake about it: 
Most moms in the Middle East yearn for the same things our mom's want, 
which is a peaceful world in which to raise their children. Most people 
in the Middle East long

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for peace. What we're dealing with are radicals and extremists who have 
a dark vision for the future. And the fundamental question facing this 
country is, will we have the nerve, will we have the willpower, will we 
have the perseverance to do the hard work today so a generation of 
younger Americans can grow up in a more peaceful world?
    And I take great hope, and I'm optimistic about achieving our 
objectives. First, I know how good our military is. Point them in the 
right direction, give them a clear goal, and they'll achieve the 
objective. Second, I know how hard people are working to protect you. 
Our intelligence is getting better. See, it's a different kind of war. 
You used to--could measure progress based upon the number of airplanes 
in the air or number of ships on the sea. It's hard to measure progress 
in this kind of war. But I'm just telling you, we're dismantling Al 
Qaida one person at a time. We're on the hunt. And it's just a matter of 
time before Usama bin Laden gets the justice 
he deserves.
    You know, let me conclude by sharing this story with you. You might 
remember, I had an interesting experience recently when I went down with 
the former Prime Minister of Japan, my 
buddy, Koizumi, who just left office recently. And we went down to 
Elvis's place--[laughter]--in Memphis. It was an interesting experience. 
[Laughter] I went there for a couple of reasons. One, I wanted to see 
Elvis's place; I'd never been--[Laughter]--60 years old and had never 
been to Graceland. Plus, Laura wanted to go. 
Secondly, Prime Minister Koizumi really wanted to go. [Laughter] He 
likes Elvis; he likes his songs; he likes everything about Elvis.
    Thirdly, I wanted to tell a story about what's possible and what 
will happen if we keep faith in the values that led to our formation and 
has led to us doing hard work in order to keep the peace. You see, the 
story I tell is the one that started with 18-year-old George H.W. 
Bush, my dad, when he joined the United 
States Navy to fight the sworn enemy, the Japanese. A lot of other 
people did too. It was a brutal war. A lot of folks died.
    And I find it interesting--not only interesting, I find it ironic in 
many ways that some 60 years later, the son of the 18-year-old fighter 
pilot was on Air Force One, flying to 
Memphis, Tennessee, with the Prime Minister of the former 
enemy, talking about how to keep the 
peace. We talked about North Korea. We talked about the fact that the 
way you defeat extremists and radicals is by helping people realize the 
blessings of liberty. Isn't that interesting? The Prime Minister of the 
former enemy talking about the blessings of liberty and freedom.
    Something happened between World War II and 2006, and that was, 
Japan adopted a Japanese-style democracy. Liberty has the capacity to 
transform enemies into allies. Liberty has the capacity to transform 
regions of hate into regions of hope. What you're seeing is the 
beginning of a victory against an ideology of extremists, by an ideology 
that yields the blessings of peace, an ideology that enables the sons of 
former enemies to sit down, crafting strategy to make the world a better 
place for generations to come.
    And that's what's going to happen some day. Elected leaders in the 
Middle East will be sitting down with an American President, talking 
about how to keep the peace. And our children and our grandchildren will 
be better off for it.
    And those are the stakes in this election. It's an important 
election. And we need people in the United States Congress who see the 
world the way it is, not the way we would hope it would be now. We have 
to have clear-eyed realists on the one hand but people who have got 
faith in the great values, the universal values that can enable us to 
look back when history passes by and say, we did our jobs. We were 
called to serve, and we served by leaving behind a

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better world--and Dean Heller is such a man.
    Thanks for coming. God bless.

Note: The President spoke at 5:29 p.m. at the Mercury Air Center. In his 
remarks, he referred to Lynne Heller, wife of congressional candidate 
Dean Heller; Gov. Kenny C. Guinn of Nevada and his wife, Dema; Mayor Bob 
Cashell of Reno, NV; Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey; 
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, senior Al Qaida leader responsible for planning 
the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, who was captured in Pakistan 
on March 1, 2003; and former President Saddam Hussein of Iraq. He also 
referred to S. 3930, the ``Military Commissions Act of 2006.''