R. CHENEY: If I want a judgment made about how an individual who is seeking the post of Commander-in-Chief, who wants to be President of the United States, how he'll conduct himself on the basic fundamental issues that I'm concerned about, and I think most Americans are concerned about these days, I look back at how he has voted when he's been given the opportunity on these kinds of issues about national security, about our military forces, about our intelligence capabilities, about when to use force and under what circumstances as guides for trying to assess how he would function as President of the United States -- and what has he said about Iraq, and how he operated in terms of the war on terror. And when I look at that record, it's pretty clear that Senator Kerry has frequently been at odds with what I think -- and what I think most Americans believe -- has been the proper approach. We can go back to the period of the 1980s when he arrived in the Senate, when he opposed virtually every major weapons system that Ronald Reagan put forward that turned out to be crucial in terms of our success, both in the Cold War, but also in terms of the kinds of capabilities that we have today to deal with the current set of circumstances that we're required to deal with.
Senator Kerry and others have said, well, when he voted against those systems back in the '80s, those were just the systems that Cheney cancelled when he was Secretary of Defense. Huge difference here. It's important to look at the distinction. Because in fact, when he was voting against those systems back in the '80s, I was voting for them. I was a member of the House of Representatives. And by the time I became Secretary of Defense, the Cold War had ended. The Soviet threat had gone away, and we needed new forces and new kinds of capabilities. So don't let anybody tell you that what he did in the 1980s when he -- at one point put out a press release that opposed -- I think this was in connection with his '84 campaign, opposed some 65 separate weapons systems, that that in any way is a parallel to the action that I undertook when I was Secretary of Defense, back in 1989 to 1993 -- very different proposition.
It's also important if you look at the other kinds of issues that he's had to deal with. When we had the first Gulf crisis -- 1990 and '91 -- and we put together the coalition, and we went and liberated Kuwait and sent the Iraqis back into Iraq, John Kerry voted against that. He stood up and argued that we should not have done what we did in Operation Desert Storm, which is one I followed fairly closely since I was Secretary of Defense then. He was on the wrong side of that issue.
When we get down to the situation with respect to Iraq, what we've seen is that initially he voted for the resolution to authorize the President to use force against Saddam Hussein. But then a few months later, when it came time to vote for the funds the President requested to equip the troops with what they needed once they had been committed to combat, he voted no. Now, there were only four members of the United States Senate that voted on one hand to commit the troops, and then came back around later on and voted against giving them the resources they needed to do what we'd asked them to do for us -- only four senators -- one was Senator Kerry and the other was Senator Edwards, two out of the four.
The bottom line in my estimation is, based on the way he's operated as a senator, his view of the world, I don't believe he has demonstrated the kind of commitment and capability and philosophy and world view, frankly, that I think is essential if we're going to have the kind of very tough policy that we need going forward if we're going to successfully defend the United States against the kind of threat we're faced with today.
(APPLAUSE)
Now, he's said that he would use military force. He'd like to do it in the fairly traditional way, when the U.S. is attacked. My argument would be, we've already been attacked. We suffered 3,000 casualties.
(APPLAUSE)
And the success of our efforts, and something that I think every American cares about, our ability to be able to ensure that our children and grandchildren are going to be able to live in a safe and secure world depends upon the basic fundamental decisions we're making now.
We made decisions at the end of World War II, at the beginning of the Cold War, when we set up the Department of Defense, and the CIA, and we created the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and undertook a bunch of major policy steps that then were in place for the next 40 years, that were key to our ultimate success in the Cold War, that were supported by Democrat and Republican alike -- Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower and Jack Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon and Gerry Ford and a whole bunch of Presidents, from both parties, supported those policies over a long period of time. We're now at that point where we're making that kind of decision for the next 30 or 40 years, and it's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on November 2nd, we make the right choice. Because if we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we'll get hit again. That we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States, and that we'll fall back into the pre-9/11 mind set if you will, that in fact these terrorist attacks are just criminal acts, and that we're not really at war. I think that would be a terrible mistake for us.
We have to understand it is a war. It's different than anything we've ever fought before. But they mean to do everything they can to destroy our way of life. They don't agree with our view of the world. They've got an extremist view in terms of their religion. They have no concept or tolerance for religious freedom. They don't believe women ought to have any rights. They've got a fundamentally different view of the world, and they will slaughter -- as they demonstrated on 9/11 -- anybody who stands in their way. So we've got to get it right. We've got to succeed here. We've got to prevail. And that's what is at stake in this election.
(APPLAUSE)
Now, I at this point would be happy to stop. And we can get into questions. You ought to throw some questions at Lynne, too. She's brighter than I am.
L. CHENEY: Yes.
(LAUGHTER)
R. CHENEY: Yes.
(LAUGHTER)
QUESTION: I'm from Des Moines, Iowa. And first of all, I just want to thank you for your leadership -- both you and Lynne, and the Bushes for your leadership and integrity that we see demonstrated in Washington, D.C., that we need so much in our country.
My question is, last week, the U.S. Department of Labor announced that a 144,000 new jobs were created, which to me is a step in the right direction. But at the same time, Senator Kerry has put these ads out saying that we have the worst economy since the Great Depression, basically. And I just wanted to know how you respond to that, and why he is basically trying to come out and mislead the United States on this issue?
R. CHENEY: Well, I obviously, disagree with him. I think to say this is the worst economy since the Great Depression -- I'm trying to think of how I can appropriately -- (LAUGHTER)
Lynne says he's been too busy windsurfing.
(Laughter and applause.)
The fact is the unemployment rate today, 5.4 percent nationally, is exactly what it was when Bill Clinton ran for reelection in 1996 -- 5.4 percent.
(APPLAUSE)
The unemployment has come down fairly significantly now over the course of the last year. We've had 12 months of steady growth. We've added 1.7 million new jobs since last August. I think they've got a vested interest in trying to portray things in a very bleak fashion, and that they've got to be able to demonstrate that there's something wrong, or that there's some fundamental problem here I supposed if they're trying to build support for the proposition that he ought to be elected President. But I just don't think the rhetoric fits with the reality. There's no question we got work to do on the economy. We always do. There's always more that we can do to improve the quality of life, to improve opportunities for people, to improve our educational system so that our kids can take advantage of our economy when they finally do get out of school, so we can train people to be able to fill those jobs that are being created. But to suggest that this is the worst economy since the Great Depression, I didn't live through the Depression. I was born in 1941. But my parents did. And I've got to tell you, I just -- I think that's rhetoric that's over the top. I don't buy it. I don't think most people do.
(APPLAUSE)
QUESTION: I'm from West Des Moines, appreciate you being here in Iowa and showing us that Iowa is important. Mrs. Cheney, I've got a question for you. No Child Left Behind certainly is something that helps improve the education of our students, and shows us that the President values education. But there's been a lot of complaints about endorsed testing. Do you think there's an over-reliance on testing to measure kids' progress?
L. CHENEY: One of my favorite anecdotes that I think helps make the point about why testing is important is about a doctor. His name is John Canal (ph). He lives in West Virginia, and -- oh, it was 15 years ago, he started noticing that when parents brought their kids in, and he said, well, how are you kids doing in school, the answer he always got was, well, they're above average.
