President George W. Bush says that in the war on terror, the United States is fighting “a brutal enemy” -- cold-blooded killers who despise freedom, reject tolerance, and kill the innocent in pursuit of their political vision.” The terrorists who hit the United States on September 11th, 2001, he says, intend to strike the United States again:
“On 9-11, we saw that oceans which separate us from other continents no longer separates us from danger. We saw the cruelty of the terrorists. We saw the future they intend for us. . . .And the next time they hope to cause destruction that will make 9-11 pale by comparison. This new kind of threat has required a new kind of war -- and we're prosecuting that war on many fronts.”
The terrorists, says President Bush, are seeking weapons of mass destruction that would allow them to kill Americans on “an unprecedented scale”:
“So we're working with friends and allies to stop our enemies from getting their hands on these weapons. We increased funding for a threat reduction program that is helping us to secure nuclear warheads and fissile materials in Russia. We launched the Global Threat Reduction Initiative that has removed enough material for more than thirty nuclear bombs from around the world. We launched the Container Security Initiative and other programs to detect and stop the movement of dangerous materials in foreign ports, and intercept these materials before they are placed on vessels destined for the United States.”
With Russia, the United States launched the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism, a voluntary partnership of more than sixty nations designed to combat the threat of nuclear terrorism on a determined and systematic basis. The U.S. also established the Proliferation Security Initiative, a coalition of more than eighty nations working to intercept shipments of weapons of mass destruction on land, sea, and in the air.
“With our allies, we're going after the proliferators and shutting down their financial networks,” says President Bush. “And through these and other efforts, the message should be clear to the enemy: We're not going to allow mass murderers to gain access to the tools of mass destruction.”
