Bush Terror Crusade 'Far from Over'

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Reuters - Wed Apr 17, 3:04 PM ET (via Yahoo)

Bush Says War Against Terror Far From Over 

By Steve Holland 

LEXINGTON, Va. (Reuters) - President Bush warned on Wednesday that
the war against terrorism was far from over, saying "cells of trained
killers" will try to regroup in Afghanistan this spring and that
"axis of evil" nations are cultivating ties to terrorist groups.

With the war on terrorism overshadowed in recent weeks by
Israeli-Palestinian bloodshed, Bush spoke to cadets at the Virginia
Military Institute after a U.S. soldier was wounded in Afghanistan by
a shot fired from a crowd in the southern city of Kandahar.

Bush said "good progress" has been made in destroying Osama bin
Laden's al Qaeda network but that as the spring thaw comes in
Afghanistan, "we expect cells of trained killers to try to regroup"
to try to disrupt efforts to build a lasting peace there.

Bush awoke to a headline in The Washington Post that said the United
States had concluded bin Laden had escaped the Afghan battle for Tora
Bora late last year and that failure to commit U.S. ground troops to
hunt him was the gravest U.S. error in the war against al Qaeda.

At a news conference in Washington, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
dismissed the report and said he never has had any conclusive
evidence of the whereabouts of bin Laden, whom the United States
holds responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks that killed around 3,000
people in New York and Washington.

"We're tough, we're determined, we're relentless. We will stay until
the mission is done," Bush said, without mentioning bin Laden by
name.

Bush did mention the recent arrest of an al Qaeda leader, Abu
Zabaydah. "He's under lock and key, and we're going to give him some
company," the president said. "We're hunting down the killers one by
one."

But Bush said it is not enough to defeat al Qaeda and the Taliban,
saying true peace in Afghanistan will only come when the battered
nation has a stable government, a trained national army, and an
education system for boys and girls alike.

In the past Bush, criticized the Clinton administration for so-called
nation building. But since sending the military to overthrow
Afghanistan's Taliban rulers, he has made clear he was committed to
creating a stable and viable Afghanistan before U.S. forces leave.

INVOKES NAME OF GEORGE C. MARSHALL

He invoked the name of a famed VMI graduate, George C. Marshall, who
was Army chief of staff during World War Two and went on to become
secretary of state. He is the namesake of the Marshall Plan that
helped rebuild postwar Europe.

"The war against terror will be long, and as George Marshall so
clearly understood, it will not be enough to make the world safer. We
must also work to make the world better," he said.

Pointing out U.S. assistance to the governments of the Philippines,
Georgia and Yemen, Bush again extended an invitation to any nation
"that needs our help will have it" in the war on terrorism and that
leaders around the world "must choose, they are with us, or they are
with the terrorists."

He used the term "axis of evil" in referring to nations feared
developing weapons of mass destruction. He coined the term in his
Jan. 29 State of the Union to describe Iraq, Iran and North Korea,
but has not repeated the phrase often after it elicited a negative
reaction from allies like France, Germany, Italy and Britain.

"A small number of outlaw regimes today possess and are developing
chemical and biological and nuclear weapons. They're building
missiles to deliver them, and at the same time cultivating ties to
terrorist groups," Bush said.

"In their threat to peace, in their mad ambitions, in their
destructive potential and in the repression of their own people,
these regimes constitute an axis of evil and the world must confront
them," he said.

Bush has said he is committed to a regime change in Iraq but the
explosive situation in the Middle East is complicating attempts to
build a regional coalition against Baghdad.

Bush pledged the United States would be deliberate and "we will work
with our friends and allies" to confront emerging threats.

"We will fight against terrorist organizations in different ways,
with different tactics, in different places," he said. "And we will
fight the threat from weapons of mass destruction in different ways,
with different tactics, in different places."

 
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