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January 2004
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For Immediate Release
January 27, 2004
Global Message
From remarks by Vice President Cheney, Davos, Switzerland, 1/24/04
Today's generation of leaders has no greater responsibility than to protect our peoples against new dangers.
Among the casualties on September 11, 2001, were citizens of more than 50 other countries. Yet for all the destruction and grief it caused, September 11th gave us the merest glimpse of the threat that international terrorism poses to us all.
Today, we face a sophisticated global network of terrorists who are opposed to the values of liberty, tolerance and openness that form the basis of our societies.
The terrorists' hatred and sense of grievance are not directed at any one government or nation or religion, but against all governments, nations and people that stand in their way.
Today's terrorists would as readily kill 300,000 innocents as they killed 3,000, and they are seeking the means to do exactly that.
From materials seized by coalition forces in Afghanistan, and interrogations of captured terrorists, we know they are doing everything they can to develop or acquire chemical, biological, radiological and even nuclear weapons.
Were they to gain those weapons -- either by their own efforts or with the help of an outlaw regime -- no appeal to reason or mortality would prevent them from committing the worst of terrors.
We must act with all urgency that this danger demands. Civilized people must do everything in our power to defeat terrorism and to stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction.
