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President Bush makes remarks on the global war on terror to
the Military Officers Association of America in Washington September
5, 2006. [Reuters] | Quoting
repeatedly from Osama bin Laden, President Bush said Tuesday that pulling
US troops out of Iraq would fulfill the terrorist leader's wishes and
propel him into a more powerful global threat in the mold of Adolf Hitler .
With two months until an Election Day that
hinges largely on national security, Bush laid out bin
Laden's vision in detail, including new revelations from previously
unreported documents. Voters were never more united behind the president
than in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, and his speech was designed
to convince Americans that the threat has not faded five years later.
To make the administration's strategy more clear, the White House on
Tuesday published a 23-page booklet called "National Strategy for
Combating Terrorism," which Bush described as an unclassified version of
the strategy he's been pursuing since Sept. 11, 2001. The booklet's
conclusion: "Since the Sept. 11 attacks, America is safer, but we are not
yet safe."
Democrats dismissed Bush's actions as a public relations strategy that
avoided real solutions.
Bush's speech was the second in a series linked to next week's
anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. It was delivered to the Military Officers
Association of America in a hotel ballroom filled with U.S. troops,
including several injured in the war, and with diplomatic representatives
of foreign countries that have suffered terrorist attacks.
Later, the White House said Bush was extending for one-year the
national emergency he declared
following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks because the "terrorist threat
continues" and measures adopted to deal with that emergency must remain in
effect.
Bush planned a third speech Wednesday from the White House, laying out
his plan to change the law so that detainees
held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, can be tried for crimes
before military commissions.
Bush argued Tuesday that history will look favorably on his currently
unpopular war strategy.
To make his case, the White House cited previously unreleased documents
including a copy of the al-Qaida charter found by coalition forces in
Afghanistan that says hostilities will continue until everyone believes in
Allah.
The White House also unveiled a letter from bin Laden to Taliban leader
Mullah Omar in which he wrote about plans for a "media campaign to create
a wedge between the American
people and their government" so the people will pressure leaders to
retreat in the fight.
Bush also quoted bin Laden saying.
"Death is better than living on this Earth with the
unbelievers among us."
"That is why we must not, and we will not, give the enemy victory in
Iraq by deserting the Iraqi
people," Bush said.
(Agencies) | 
