US: In a trenchant restatement of the Bush administration's policy of pre-emptive action, the US Vice President, Mr Dick Cheney, yesterday defended the US-led invasion of Iraq as part of a war on terror where the United States must strike first to avoid another 9/11, writes Conor O'Clery, North America Editor
"It would be reckless in the extreme to rule out action and save our worries until the day they strike," Mr Cheney told the Heritage Foundation in Washington.
"If the threats from terrorists and terrorist states are permitted to fully emerge, all actions, all words and all recriminations would come too late."
"As long as George W. Bush is president of the United States, this country will not permit gathering threats to become certain tragedies," said Mr Cheney. Previous attempts to stop terrorist attacks against America had been ad hoc and had not secured the country against an even more deadly attack using nuclear or biological or chemical weapons.
"The ultimate nightmare could bring devastation to our country on a scale we have never experienced," he said.
"Instead of losing thousands of lives, we might lose tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands in a single day of war.
"Remember what we saw on the morning of 9/11. And knowing the nature of these enemies, we have as clear a responsibility as could ever fall to government. We must do everything in our power to keep terrorists from ever acquiring weapons of mass destruction." In casting the Iraq invasion as part of the war on terror, Mr Cheney did not offer any new evidence of links between Saddam and al-Qaeda.
In Oklahoma the previous evening, Mr Cheney said: "In a sense 9/11 changed everything for how, as a government, we think about national security, about how we defend America, about we protect ourselves.
"What we discovered on 9/11 is that we were, in fact, at war."
The new strategy was to go after the terrorists. "Most significant was the doctrine that President Bush announced that first night after the attack on 9/11, what's come to be known as the Bush doctrine, that we would hold accountable . . . those who supported terror, those who sponsored it, states that provided safe harbour and sanctuary for terrorists. And that's exactly what we've done."
Not using troops until there was UN approval "would put us in a position where faced with a serious threat, which we believe we had to act against, of allowing one nation, or a handful of nations to veto US military action," Mr Cheney said.
"The problem we have now is that the biggest threat of all is the possibility of the terrorists acquiring deadly weapons - deadlier than anything we've ever known."
The US moved on Iraq "because not only did you have a state that was run by one of the most brutal dictatorships of modern times, but a state that acquired and used weapons of mass destruction, and that sponsored and provided safe harbour to terrorists, and had for many years." Mr Bush has formulated a tough new stump speech portraying himself as a decisive leader.
"We've been through a lot, but we acted, we led," Mr Bush said in New Hampshire on Thursday, adding that America's challenges "cannot be met with timid actions or bitter words".
"It is undeniable that Saddam Hussein was a deceiver and a danger," Mr Bush said. There is only one decent and humane reaction to the fall of Saddam Hussein: good riddance."
Mr Bush rejected criticism that progress is too slow in Iraq, saying Americans are not hearing the real story. "It's a lot better than you probably think," the President said. He said schools and hospitals are reopening, children are getting immunisations and water and electricity are coming back. "Life is getting better," he said.
The International Red Cross yesterday added its voice of condemnation at the continuing detention in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba of 600 people who the US say are linked to al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
On Thursday, a group of former US federal judges, diplomats, military officials and human rights advocates urged the Supreme Court to review the case of the detainees.
"The idea that American executive branch personnel, particularly military personnel, can detain people beyond the reach of habeas corpus is just repugnant to the rule of law," said Mr John Gibbons, former chief judge of the federal appeals court in Philadelphia.